The Origin of Angular Momentum in Dark Matter Halos

By Maya Vitvitska, Anatoly Klypin, Andrey V. Kravtsov, Risa Wechsler, Joel R. Primack, James S. Bullock. 2001

293 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We propose a new explanation for the origin of angular momentum in galaxies and their dark halos, in which the halos obtain their spin through the cumulative acquisition of angular momentum from satellite accretion. In our model, the buildup of angular momentum is a random walk process associated with the mass assembly history of the halo's major progenitor. We assume no correlation between the angular momenta of accreted objects. The main role of tidal torques in this approach is to produce the random tangential velocities of merging satellites. Using the extended Press-Schechter approximation, we calculate the growth of mass, angular momentum, and spin parameter λ for many halos. Our random walk model reproduces the key features of the angular momentum of halos found in ΛCDM N-body simulations: a lognormal distribution in λ with an average of ≈ 0.045 and dispersion σλ = 0.56, independent of mass and redshift. The evolution of the spin parameter in individual halos in this model is quite different from the steady increase with time of angular momentum in the tidal torque picture. We find both in N-body simulations and in our random walk model that the value of λ changes significantly with time for a halo's major progenitor. It typically has a sharp increase due to major mergers and a steady decline during periods of gradual accretion of small satellites. The model predicts that, on average, the λ of ~1012 M☉ halos that had major mergers after redshift z = 3 should be substantially larger than the λ of those that did not. Perhaps surprisingly, this suggests that halos that host later forming elliptical galaxies should rotate faster than halos of spiral galaxies.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

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Citations in the corpus

Ultradiffuse galaxies: the high-spin tail of the abundant dwarf galaxy population (2016, background): “We assume that the distribution of halo spin parameters λ ≡ J |E|1/2G−1M−5/2 (1) is log-normal, with a mean value of 〈lnλ〉 = 0.05 and σ(lnλ) = 0.52, independent of redshift and halo mass (e.g., Bullock et al. 2001; Vitvitska et al. 2002; Macciò et al. 2007; Kim et al. 2015).”
Determining the Properties and Evolution of Red Galaxies from the Quasar Luminosity Function (2005, methodology): “The disk scale-length is computed based on an assumed spin parameterλ = 0.033, chosen to be near the mode in the observedλ distribution (Vitvitska et al. 2002), and the scale-length of the bulge is set to 0.2 times the resulting value.”
Simulations of Early Structure Formation: Primordial Gas Clouds (2003, background): “Intriguingly, Vitvitska et al. (2002) argue that halos which have experienced recent major mergers tend to have high spin parameters.”
Formation of Galaxy Clusters (2012, background): “…mergers are not as violent as envisioned in the violent relaxation scenario (Valluri et al. 2007), such interactions lead to significant redistribution of mass (Kazantzidis, Zentner & Kravtsov 2006) and angular momentum (Vitvitska et al. 2002), both within and outside ofthe virial radius.”
The statistics of lambda CDM Halo Concentrations (2007, background): “This effect seems to be par- ticularly important during mergers, and leads to an overall reduction of λ as the merger progresses (see also Gardner (2001); Vitvitska et al. (2002)).”
The evolution of massive black hole seeds (2007, result): “Recent work on the fate of halo spins during mergers in cosmological simulations has led to conflicting results: Vitvitska et al. (2002) suggest that the spin parameter of a halo increases after a major merger, and the angular momentum decreases after a long series of minor mergers; D’Onghia &…”
Self-regulated star formation in galaxies via momentum input from massive stars (2011, result): “…c = 11 and a spin parameter λ = 0.033, chosen to match the typical concentrations and spins seen in cosmological simulations (Bullock et al. 2001; Vitvitska et al. 2002); this gives a total stellar-to-dark-matter mass ratio similar to that inferred for systems of this mass (e.g. by Moster et…”
The impact of mergers on relaxed X-ray clusters – I. Dynamical evolution and emergent transient structures (2006, methodology): “Unlike in the rest of our study, we define the virial radius here by an overdensity = 100, corresponding to the threshold used by Vitvitska et al. (2002).”
DISSIPATION AND EXTRA LIGHT IN GALACTIC NUCLEI. II. “CUSP” ELLIPTICALS (2008, methodology): “The disk scale-length is computed based on an assumed spin parameter λ = 0.033, chosen to be near the mode in the λ distribution measured in simulations (Vitvitska et al. 2002), and the scale-length of the bulge is set to 0.2 times this.”
Star Formation Properties of a Large Sample of Irregular Galaxies (2004, background): “The low specific angular momentum of BCDs could also have resulted from the last big merger (Vitvitska et al. 2002), or from an old interaction that deformed the dark matter halo into a prolate spheroid, which then drove a disk response like a bar in a barred galaxy (Bekki & Freeman 2003).”
The SAURON project – IX. A kinematic classification for early‐type galaxies (2007, background): “If major mergers produce a significant increase in the specific angular momentum of the dark matter halos at large radii (Vitvitska et al. 2002), minor mergers seem to just preserveo only slightly increase it with time (D’Onghia & Burkert 2004).”
The origin and implications of dark matter anisotropic cosmic infall on ~L * haloes (2004, background): “However, the point is still moot and recent publications did not confirm such an anisotropy using resimulated haloes; they proposed 20 per cent as a maximum for the anisotropy level of the distribution of satellites (Vitvitska et al. 2002).”
The SLUGGS Survey: kinematics for over 2500 globular clusters in 12 early-type galaxies (2012, background): “These events are expected (e.g. Vitvitska et al. 2002; Hetznecker & Burkert 2006), and observed (e.g. Romanowsky et al. 2012), to perturb the halo kinematics of massive galaxies.”
The Dependence of Halo Clustering on Halo Formation History, Concentration, and Occupation (2005, background): “…and halo shape are two such halo properties that are relevant to galaxy formation and are known to correlate well with halo formation history (e.g., Vitvitska et al. 2002; Allgood et al. 2006) The quantity from dissipationless simulations that is most pertinent to models of the statistics of…”
The evolution of dark matter halo properties in clusters, filaments, sheets and voids (2007, background): “In agreement with these (e.g. Vitvitska et al. 2002), we do not observe any significant evolution of the global spin parameter with redshift.”
Orbital parameters of infalling dark matter substructures (2004, methodology): “Although the two distributions differ as judged by a χ2 test, the discrepancy is due to two points and plausibly reflects our ignorance of the true errors and the differences in the simulations (e.g. softening, method of force calculation etc.) used in this work and that of Vitvitska et al. (2002).”
A Wide-Field Hubble Space Telescope Study of the Cluster Cl 0024+16 at z = 0.4. I. Morphological Distributions to 5 Mpc Radius (2003, background): “Since galaxies are not in purely radial orbits (e.g., Ghigna et al. 1998; van der Marel et al. 2000; Vitvitska et al. 2002), a significant fraction of galaxies at or beyond the virial radius will never reach the cluster center.”
The spin and shape of dark matter haloes in the Millennium simulation of a Λ cold dark matter universe (2006, background): “These features are not usually seen in other published spin distributions (e.g. Gardner 2001, Vitvitska et al. 2002, Avila-Reese et al. 2005, Tonini et al. 2006, among many others), partly because more advanced groupfinders and halo selection criteria are often used (as we do below).”
Resolving the Formation of Protogalaxies. II. Central Gravitational Collapse (2007, background): “However, in recent years, several groups have recognized that the mergers may impart a considerable fraction of angular momentum to the system (Steinmetz & Bartelmann 1995; Gardner 2001; Vitvitska et al. 2002; Maller et al. 2002).”