Galaxy formation and evolution

Abstract:

Vector resonant relaxation (VRR) is known to be the fastest gravitational process that shapes the geometry of stellar orbits in nuclear star clusters. This leads to the realignment of the orbital planes on the corresponding VRR time-scale tVRR of a few million years, while the eccentricity e and semimajor axis a of the individual orbits are approximately conserved. The distribution of orbital inclinations reaches an internal equilibrium characterized by two conserved quantities, the total potential energy among stellar orbits, Etot, and the total angular momentum, Ltot. On time-scales longer than tVRR, the eccentricities and semimajor axes change slowly, and the distribution of orbital inclinations are expected to evolve through a series of VRR equilibria. Using a Monte Carlo Markov Chain method, we determine the equilibrium distribution of orbital inclinations in the microcanonical ensemble with fixed Etot and Ltot for isolated nuclear star clusters with a power-law distribution of a, e, and m, where m is the stellar mass. We explore the possible equilibria for nine representative Etot–Ltot pairs that cover the possible parameter space. For all cases, the equilibria show anisotropic mass segregation, where the distribution of more massive objects is more flattened than that for lighter objects. Given that stellar black holes are more massive than the average main-sequence stars, these findings suggest that black holes reside in disc-like structures within nuclear star clusters for a wide range of initial conditions.

Abstract:

Residuals between measured galactic radii and those predicted by the Fundamental Plane (FP) are possible tracers of weak lensing magnification. However, observations have shown these to be systematically correlated with the large-scale structure. We use the Horizon-AGN hydrodynamical cosmological simulation to analyse these intrinsic size correlations (ISCs) for both elliptical (early-type) and spiral (late-type) galaxies at z = 0.06. We fit separate FPs to each sample, finding similarly distributed radius residuals, λ, in each case. We find persistent λλ correlations over three-dimensional separations 0.5–17h⁻¹ Mpc in the case of spiral galaxies, at >3σ significance. When relaxing a mass-selection, applied for better agreement with galaxy clustering constraints, the spiral λλ detection strengthens to 9σ; we detect a 5σ density-λ correlation; and we observe intrinsically-large spirals to cluster more strongly than small spirals over scales ≲10h⁻¹ Mpc at >5σ significance. Conversely, and in agreement with the literature, we observe lower-mass, intrinsically-small ellipticals to cluster more strongly than their large counterparts over scales 0.5–17h⁻¹ Mpc at >5σ significance. We model λλ correlations using a phenomenological non-linear size model, and predict the level of contamination for cosmic convergence analyses. We find the systematic contribution to be of similar order to, or dominant over the cosmological signal. We make a mock measurement of an intrinsic, systematic contribution to the projected surface mass density Σ(r), and find statistically significant low-amplitude, positive (negative) contributions from lower-mass spirals (ellipticals), which may be of concern for large-scale (⁠≳7h⁻¹ Mpc) measurements.