Michele Cappellari

Abstract:

Early-type galaxies (ETGs) show a bimodal distribution in key structural properties like stellar specific angular momentum, kinematic morphology, shape, and nuclear surface brightness profiles. Slow rotator ETGs, mostly found in the densest regions of galaxy clusters, become common when the stellar mass exceeds a critical value of around M∗crit≈2×1011M⊙, or more precisely when lg(Re/kpc)≳12.4−lg(M∗/M⊙). These galaxies have low specific angular momentum, spheroidal shapes, and stellar populations that are old, metal-rich, and α-enhanced. In contrast, fast rotator ETGs form a continuous sequence of properties with spiral galaxies. In these galaxies, the age, metallicity, and α-enhancement of the stellar population correlate best with the effective stellar velocity dispersion σe∝M∗/Re (i.e., properties are similar for Re∝M∗), or with other proxies approximating their bulge mass fraction. This sequence spans from star-forming spiral disks to quenched, passive, spheroid-dominated fast rotator ETGs. Notably, at a fixed σe, younger galaxies show lower metallicity. The structural differences and environmental distributions of ETGs suggest two distinct formation pathways: slow rotators undergo early intense star formation followed by rapid quenching via their dark halos and supermassive black holes, and later evolve through dry mergers during hierarchical cluster assembly; fast rotators, on the other hand, develop more gradually through gas accretion and minor mergers, becoming quenched by internal feedback above a characteristic lg(σecrit/km s−1) ≳ 2.3 (in the local Universe) or due to environmental effects.