Comparing galaxy merger orbits in hydrodynamical simulation and in dark-matter-only simulation

TL;DR

This study compares galaxy merger orbits and timescales in hydrodynamical and dark-matter-only simulations, revealing baryons accelerate mergers and influence orbit shapes.

Contribution

It provides detailed analysis of how baryons affect galaxy merger dynamics and timescales across different simulation resolutions.

Findings

Baryons lead to shorter merger timescales.

Merger orbits become more head-on in hydrodynamical simulations.

Baryons cause more spiral-in orbits in galaxy mergers.

Abstract

To investigate how the presence of baryons in simulations affects galaxy merger orbits, we compare in detail the merger timescales and orbits of the matched merger pairs in TNG100 hydrodynamical simulations and their corresponding dark-matter-only simulations, for different resolution levels. Compared with the mergers in the TNG100-1-Dark simulation without baryons, the matched mergers in the TNG100-1 simulation have similar infall time, but have statistically earlier merger times and therefore shorter merger timescales. The merger orbits for the matched pairs in the TNG100-1 and the TNG100-1-Dark simulations are similar right after infall, and both evolve to more head-on orbits at final stages, with smaller changes in the hydrodynamical simulation. In the final 2 Gyr before merger, the collision angles that represent merger orbits quantitatively are smaller in TNG100-1 than those in TNG100-1-Dark, by around 6$^\circ$ to 10$^\circ$, depending on the mass ratios and galaxy masses investigated. Our results demonstrate that the presence of baryons accelerates a bit the merger processes, and results in more spiral-in orbits for both major and minor mergers in galaxies with various stellar masses. These effects are less obvious in simulations with lower resolutions.