Hot and counter-rotating star-forming disk galaxies in IllustrisTNG and their real-world counterparts

TL;DR

This study uses the IllustrisTNG simulation to analyze the origin and properties of hot, sometimes counter-rotating, star-forming disk galaxies, revealing their transient nature often caused by interactions, and comparing them with observed MaNGA galaxies.

Contribution

It uncovers the transient, interaction-driven origin of hot, misaligned star-forming disks and links simulation results with real-world observations from MaNGA.

Findings

Dynamically hot disks are often transient, caused by galaxy interactions.

Misaligned gas and stellar disks are common in hot star-forming galaxies.

Simulated properties match observed MaNGA galaxies with kinematic misalignment.

Abstract

A key feature of a large population of low-mass, late-type disk galaxies are star-forming disks with exponential light distributions. They are typically also associated with thin and flat morphologies, blue colors, and dynamically cold stars moving along circular orbits within co-planar thin gas disks. However, the latter features do not necessarily always imply the former, in fact, a variety of different kinematic configurations do exist. In this work, we use the cosmological hydrodynamical IllustrisTNG Simulation to study the nature and origin of dynamically hot, sometimes even counter-rotating, star-forming disk galaxies in the lower stellar mass range (between $5\times 10^9\,\mathrm{M_{\odot}}$ and $2\times 10^{10}\,\mathrm{M_{\odot}}$). We find that being dynamically hot arises in most cases as an induced transient state, for example due to galaxy interactions and merger activities, rather than as an age-dependent evolutionary phase of star-forming disk galaxies. The dynamically hot but still actively star-forming disks show a common feature of hosting kinematically misaligned gas and stellar disks, and centrally concentrated on-going star formation. The former is often accompanied by disturbed gas morphologies, while the latter is reflected in low gas and stellar spins in comparison to their dynamically cold, normal disk counterparts. Interestingly, observed galaxies from MaNGA with kinematic misalignment between gas and stars show remarkably similar general properties as the IllustrisTNG galaxies, and therefore are plausible real-world counterparts. In turn, this allows us to make predictions for the stellar orbits and gas properties of these misaligned galaxies.