Galaxy formation and evolution

Abstract:

We measure λRe, a proxy for galaxy specific stellar angular momentum within one effective radius, and the ellipticity, ∈, for about 2300 galaxies of all morphological types observed with integral field spectroscopy as part of the MaNGA survey, the largest such sample to date. We use the (λRe; ∈) diagram to separate early-type galaxies into fast and slow rotators. We also visually classify each galaxy according to its optical morphology and two-dimensional stellar velocity field. Comparing these classifications to quantitative λRe measurements reveals tight relationships between angular momentum and galaxy structure. In order to account for atmospheric seeing, we use realistic models of galaxy kinematics to derive a general approximate analytic correction for λRe . Thanks to the size of the sample and the large number of massive galaxies, we unambiguously detect a clear bimodality in the (λRe; ∈) diagram which may result from fundamental differences in galaxy assembly history. There is a sharp secondary density peak inside the region of the diagram with low λRe and ∈ < 0:4, previously suggested as the definition for slow rotators. Most of these galaxies are visually classified as non-regular rotators and have high velocity dispersion. The intrinsic bimodality must be stronger, as it tends to be smoothed by noise and inclination. The large sample of slow rotators allows us for the first time to unveil a secondary peak at ±90° in their distribution of the misalignments between the photometric and kinematic position angles. We confirm that genuine slow rotators start appearing above a stellar mass of 2 x 10^11 M⊙ where a significant number of high-mass fast rotators also exist.

Abstract:

Mergers of stellar-mass black holes on highly eccentric orbits are among the targets for ground-based gravitational-wave detectors, including LIGO, VIRGO, and KAGRA. These sources may commonly form through gravitational-wave emission in high velocity dispersion systems or through the secular Kozai-Lidov mechanism in triple systems. Gravitational waves carry information about the binaries' orbital parameters and source location. Using the Fisher matrix technique, we determine the measurement accuracy with which the LIGO-VIRGO-KAGRA network could measure the source parameters of eccentric binaries using a matched filtering search of the repeated burst and eccentric inspiral phases of the waveform. We account for general relativistic precession and the evolution of the orbital eccentricity and frequency during the inspiral. We find that the signal-to-noise ratio and the parameter measurement accuracy may be significantly higher for eccentric sources than for circular sources. This increase is sensitive to the initial pericenter distance, the initial eccentricity, and component masses. For instance, compared to a 30 Msun-30 Msun non-spinning circular binary, the chirp mass and sky localization accuracy can improve for an initially highly eccentric binary by a factor of ~129 (38) and ~2 (11) assuming an initial pericenter distance of 20 Mtot (10 Mtot).