An excessively massive thick disc of the enormous edge-on lenticular galaxy NGC7572

TL;DR

This study reveals that the enormous edge-on galaxy NGC7572 hosts an unusually massive thick disc formed rapidly, with detailed analysis of its stellar populations and kinematics shedding light on galaxy formation processes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel technique for reconstructing stellar velocity distributions and provides new insights into the mass and formation history of thick discs in large galaxies.

Findings

The thick disc is 2.7 times more massive than the thin disc.

The thick disc has a [Mg/Fe] of +0.3 dex, indicating rapid formation.

The galaxy's thin disc growth was prematurely halted.

Abstract

Galactic discs are known to have a complex multilayer structure. An in-depth study of the stellar population properties of the thin and thick components can elucidate the formation and evolution of disc galaxies. Even though thick discs are ubiquitous, their origin is still debated. Here we probe the thick disc formation scenarios by investigating NGC7572, an enormous edge-on galaxy having $R_{25}\approx 25$ kpc and $V_{\rm rot} \approx 370$ km s$^{-1}$, which substantially exceeds the Milky Way size and mass. We analysed DECaLS archival imaging and found that the disc of NGC7572 contains two flaring stellar discs (a thin and a thick disc) with similar radial scales. We collected deep long-slit spectroscopic data using the 6m Russian BTA telescope and analysed them with a novel technique. We first reconstructed a non-parametric stellar line-of-sight velocity distribution along the radius of the galaxy and then fitted it with two kinematic components accounting for the orbital distribution of stars in thin and thick discs. The old thick disc turned out to be 2.7 times as massive as the intermediate-age thin component, $1.6\times 10^{11}$ $\textrm{M}_{\odot}$ vs. $5.9\times10^{10}$ $\textrm{M}_{\odot}$, which is very unusual. The different duration of the formation epochs evidenced by the [Mg/Fe] values of +0.3 and +0.15 dex for the thick and thin discs respectively, their kinematics and the mass ratio suggest that in NGC7572 we observe a rapidly formed very massive thick disc and an underdeveloped thin disc, whose growth ended prematurely due to the exhaustion of the cold gas likely because of environmental effects.