On the alignment between binary spiral galaxies

Pestaña, José Luis G.; Cabrera, Javier

doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2004.08145.x

Cited by 10 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 15 publications

(17 reference statements)

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“…The second task is to improve the observational analyses. Although several works already investigated the spin alignments of the isolated galactic pairs (e.g., Gott & Thuan 1978;Sharp et al 1979;Helou 1984;Oosterloo 1993;Pestaña & Cabrera 2004;Cervantes-Sodi et al 2010;Lee 2012), it is still inconclusive whether the intrinsic signals truly exist or not. The main reason for having failed to confirm or to refute convincingly the existence of the spin alignments in the isolated galactic pairs is the poor approximations that the previous works relied on for their analyses.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detection of Intrinsic Spin Alignments in Isolated Spiral Pairs

Koo¹,

Lee²

2018

ApJ

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An observational evidence for the intrinsic galaxy alignments in isolated spiral pairs is presented. From the catalog of the galaxy groups identified by Tempel et al. in the flux limited galaxy sample of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 10, we select those groups consisting only of two spiral galaxies as isolated spiral pairs and investigate if and how strongly the spin axes of their two spiral members are aligned with each other. We detect a clear signal of intrinsic spin alignment in the isolated spiral pairs, which leads to the rejection of the null hypothesis at the 99.9999% confidence level via the Rayleigh test. It is also found that those isolated pairs comprising two early-type spiral galaxies exhibit the strongest signal of intrinsic spin alignment and that the strength of the alignment signal depends on the angular separation distance as well as on the luminosity ratio of the member galaxies. Using the dark matter halos consisting of only two subhalos resolved in the EAGLE hydrodynamic simulations, we repeat the same analysis but fail to find any alignment tendency between the spin angular momentum vectors of the stellar components of the subhalos, which is in tension with the observational result. A couple of possible sources of this apparent inconsistency between the observational and the numerical results are discussed.Subject headings: cosmology:theory -large-scale structure of universe If the radial component ofĴ is positive, then the Cartesian coordinates,Ĵ = (Ĵ x ,Ĵ y ,Ĵ z ),

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detection of Intrinsic Spin Alignments in Isolated Spiral Pairs

Koo¹,

Lee²

2018

ApJ

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“…Previous studies have found several types of alignments associated with galaxy pairs in which both the neighbor and the LSS play a role. First, the spins of the two galaxies in a pair tend to be preferentially aligned in the same direction (Flin 1993;Pestaña & Cabrera 2004;Slosar et al 2009;Cervantes-Sodi et al 2010;Mesa et al 2014;Koo & Lee 2018), although some controversy still remains (Oosterloo 1993;Buxton & Ryden 2012;Lee 2012). Such spin-spin alignment of galaxy pairs is generally interpreted as a result of the combined effect of the underlying LSS and the mutual interaction between paired galaxies (e.g., Sharp et al 1979;Helou 1984).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Living with Neighbors. III. The Origin of the Spin$-$Orbit Alignment of Galaxy Pairs: A Neighbor versus the Large-scale Structure

Moon,

An,

Yoon

2021

Preprint

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Recent observations revealed a coherence between the spin vector of a galaxy and the orbital motion of its neighbors. We refer to the phenomenon as "the spin-orbit alignment (SOA)" and explore its physical origin via the IllustrisTNG simulation. This is the first study to utilize a cosmological hydrodynamic simulation to investigate the SOA of galaxy pairs. In particular, we identify paired galaxies at z = 0 having the nearest neighbor with mass ratios from 1/10 to 10 and calculate the spin-orbit angle for each pair. Our results are as follows. (a) There exists a clear preference for prograde orientations (i.e., SOA) for galaxy pairs, qualitatively consistent with observations. (b) The SOA is significant for both baryonic and dark matter spins, being the strongest for gas and the weakest for dark matter. (c) The SOA is stronger for less massive targets and for targets having closer neighbors. (d) The SOA strengthens for galaxies in low-density regions, and the signal is dominated by central-satellite pairs in low-mass halos. (e) There is an explicit dependence of the SOA on the duration of interaction with its current neighbor. Taken together, we propose that the SOA witnessed at z = 0 has been developed mainly by interactions with a neighbor for an extended period of time, rather than tidal torque from the ambient large-scale structure.

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“…Determining the angle α between the spin vectors of two spiral galaxies requires high-resolution imaging or spatially resolved spectroscopy. In practice, this has limited sample size; Helou (1984), Oosterloo (1993), and Pestaña & Cabrera (2004) all had N < 50 pairs in their samples. In addition, the assumptions must be made that dust lanes are on the outside of spiral arms and that spiral arms are trailing; these assumptions are not invariably true.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Different investigators, even those using similar techniques or overlapping data sets, find very different conclusions. These range from random orientation of spin axes (Sharp et al 1979;Oosterloo 1993;CervantesSodi et al 2010), to a tendency for axes to be parallel (Helou 1984;Flin 1993), to a tendency for axes to be perpendicular (Sofue 1992), to a tendency for axes to be either parallel or perpendicular (Pestaña & Cabrera 2004). Our plunge into these troubled waters begins with selecting a sample of close pairs of disk galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), as described in Section 2.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Using a sample of 40 pairs, Oosterloo (1993) found that their spin vectors were uncorrelated. Pestaña & Cabrera (2004) used a sample of 46 pairs of galaxies, largely drawn from the study of Oosterloo (1993), but discarded the information that resolved the spin ambiguity; they then found a tendency for spin axes to be either parallel or perpendicular, with a shortage of pairs at β ∼ 45…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Relative Orientation of Pairs of Spiral Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Buxton

Ryden

2012

ApJ

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From our study of binary spiral galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 6, we find that the relative orientation of disks in binary spiral galaxies is consistent with their being drawn from a random distribution of orientations. For 747 isolated pairs of luminous disk galaxies, the distribution of φ, the angle between the major axes of the galaxy images, is consistent with a uniform distribution on the interval [0With the assumption that the disk galaxies are oblate spheroids, we can compute cos β, where β is the angle between the rotation axes of the disks. In the case that one galaxy in the binary is face-on or edge-on, the tilt ambiguity is resolved, and cos β can be computed unambiguously. For 94 isolated pairs with at least one face-on member, and for 171 isolated pairs with at least one edge-on member, the distribution of cos β is statistically consistent with the distribution of cos i for isolated disk galaxies. This result is consistent with random orientations of the disks within pairs.

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On the alignment between binary spiral galaxies

Cited by 10 publications

References 15 publications

Detection of Intrinsic Spin Alignments in Isolated Spiral Pairs

Detection of Intrinsic Spin Alignments in Isolated Spiral Pairs

Living with Neighbors. III. The Origin of the Spin$-$Orbit Alignment of Galaxy Pairs: A Neighbor versus the Large-scale Structure

Relative Orientation of Pairs of Spiral Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

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