The mass-size plane of EAGLE galaxies [GA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/1908.00416


Current observational results show that both late-and-early-type galaxies follow tight mass-size planes, on which physical properties such as age, velocity dispersion and metallicities correlate with the scatter on the plane. We study the mass-size plane of galaxies in cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, as a function of velocity dispersion, age, chemical abundances, ellipticity and spin parameters with the aim at assessing to what extent the current cosmological paradigm can reproduce these observations and provide a physical interpretation of them. We select a sample of well-resolved galaxies from the (100 Mpc)^3 simulation of the EAGLE Project. This sample is composed by 508 spheroid-dominated galaxies and 1213 disc-dominated galaxies. The distributions of velocity dispersion, age, metallicity indicators and gradients and spin parameters across the mass-size plane are analysed. Furthermore, we study the relation between shape and kinematic parameters. The results are compared with observations. The mass-weighted ages of the EAGLE galaxies are found to vary along lines of constant velocity dispersion on the mass-size plane, except for galaxies with velocity dispersion larger than aprox 150 km s^(-1) . Negative age gradients tend to be found in extended disc galaxies in agreement with observations. However, the age distributions of early-type galaxies show a larger fraction with inverted radial profiles. The distribution of metallicity gradients does not show any clear dependence on this plane. Galaxies with similar spin parameters ({\lambda}) display larger sizes as their dynamical masses increase. Stellar-weighted ages are found to be good proxies for {\lambda} in galaxies with low ellipticity ({\epsilon}). Abridged

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M. Rosito, P. Tissera, S. Pedrosa, et. al.
Fri, 2 Aug 19
30/61

Comments: 10 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in A&A