Tidally induced morphology of M33 in hydrodynamical simulations of its recent interaction with M31

TL;DR

This study uses hydrodynamical simulations to model M33's recent interaction with M31, explaining observed tidal features, spiral structures, and star formation bursts resulting from gravitational and ram pressure effects.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed hydrodynamical model of M33-M31 interaction, highlighting the combined effects of tidal forces and ram pressure in reproducing observed galaxy features.

Findings

Tidal interactions induce two-armed spiral structures in M33.

Gaseous warp features are best reproduced when including M31's hot gas halo.

Interaction triggers stellar streams and star formation bursts in M33.

Abstract

We present a hydrodynamical model of M33 and its recent interaction with M31. This scenario was previously proposed in the literature in order to explain the distorted gaseous and stellar disks of M33, as well as the increased star formation rate in both objects around 2 Gyr ago. We used an orbit integration scheme to find which estimate of the transverse velocity of M31 more favors the interaction scenario and then tried to reproduce it in our simulations. M33 was modeled as a stellar and gaseous disk embedded in a live dark-matter halo, while M31 was approximated only with a live dark halo. In the simulations the two galaxies passed each other with a pericenter distance of 37 kpc. Tides excited a two-armed spiral structure in the M33 disk, which is found to be the predominant spiral signal in the observed galaxy and has been long known as a feature easily induced by tidal interactions. We found that the gaseous warp produced by the interaction did not resemble enough the observed one and we performed an additional simulation including the hot gas halo of M31 to show that this feature can be properly reproduced by tidal forces and ram pressure stripping acting simultaneously on the gaseous disk. In addition to the spiral arms, tidal forces produced the stellar stream similar to the observed one and triggered a star formation burst at similar radii as it is observed.