The role of spin in the formation and evolution of galaxies

Understand

Using the SDSS spectroscopic sample, we estimate the dark matter halo spin parameter lambda for ~53,000 disk galaxies for which MOPED star formation histories are available.

• We investigate the relationship between spin and total stellar mass, star formation history, and environment.
• First, we find a clear anti-correlation between stellar mass and spin, with low mass galaxies generally having high dark matter spins.
• Second, galaxies which have formed more than ~5% of their stars in the last 0.2 Gyr have more broadly distributed and typically higher spins (including a significant fraction with lambda > 0.1) than galaxies which formed a large fraction of their stars more than 10 Gyr ago.