Large dark matter content and steep metallicity profile predicted for Ultra-Diffuse Galaxies formed in high-spin halos

TL;DR

This study uses simulations to analyze ultra-diffuse galaxies, revealing they have high dark matter content, steep metallicity profiles, and form mainly in high-spin halos, with implications for their formation history.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of UDG metallicity profiles and their relation to formation mechanisms using high-resolution cosmological simulations.

Findings

UDGs are dark matter dominated with high-spin halos.

UDGs are 2-10 times less efficient at star formation than non-UDGs.

Metallicity profiles can distinguish different UDG formation paths.

Abstract

We study the stellar properties of a sample of simulated ultra-diffuse galaxies (UDGs) with stellar mass $\rm{M_\star=10^{7.5} - 10^{9} ~ M_{\odot}}$, selected from the TNG50 simulation, where UDGs form mainly in high-spin dwarf-mass halos. We divide our sample into star-forming and quenched UDGs, finding good agreement with the stellar assembly history measured in observations. Star-forming UDGs and quenched UDGs with $\rm{M_\star \geq 10^8 ~ M_\odot}$ in our sample are particularly inefficient at forming stars, having $2$ - $10$ times less stellar mass than non-UDGs for the same virial mass halo. These results are consistent with recent mass inferences in UDG samples and suggest that the most inefficient UDGs arise from a late assembly of the dark matter mass followed by a stellar growth that is comparatively slower (for star-forming UDGs) or that was interrupted due to environmental removal of the gas (for quenched UDGs). Regardless of efficiency, UDGs are $60\%$ poorer in [Fe/H] than the population of non-UDGs at a fixed stellar mass, with the most extreme objects having metal content consistent with the simulated mass-metallicity relation at $z \sim 2$. Quenched UDGs stop their star formation in shorter timescales than non-UDGs of similar mass and are, as a consequence, alpha-enhanced with respect to non-UDGs. We identify metallicity profiles in UDGs as a potential avenue to distinguish between different formation paths for these galaxies, where gentle formation as a result of high-spin halos would present well-defined declining metallicity radial profiles while powerful-outflows or tidal stripping formation models would lead to flatter or constant metallicity as a function of radius due to the inherent mixing of stellar orbits.