Galaxy Spin Transition Driven by the Misalignments between the Protogalaxy Inertia and Initial Tidal Tensors

Abstract

Abstract A numerical detection of the τ-driven transition of galaxy spins is presented, where τ is the degree of misalignment between the initial tidal field and protogalaxy inertia tensors. Analyzing the data from the IllustrisTNG300-1 simulations, we first measure the values of τ at the protogalactic sites found by tracing the constituents of the galactic halos in the mass range of 10.5 ≤ log M h / ( h − 1 M ⊙ ) ≤ 13 back to the initial stage, z i = 127. The probability density functions of τ are shown to be well modeled by the Γ-distributions, whose shape and scale parameters turn out to have universal values on a certain critical scale. Then, we investigate how the strength and tendency of the galaxy spin alignments with the principal axes of the local tidal fields depend on the initial condition, τ. It is found that on a scale lower than the critical one, the galaxy spin transition occurs at two different thresholds from the major to intermediate and from the intermediate to minor principal axes of the local tidal fields, respectively. Noting that the τ-dependent spin transition supersedes the strength of the previously found mass-dependent, morphology-dependent, and radius-dependent counterparts, we suggest that τ should be the key driver of all types of galaxy spin transitions and that the present galaxy spins are indeed excellent fossil records of their origin.