Detalles de publicación

PP 020140

The kinematics of young and old stellar populations in nuclear rings of MUSE TIMER galaxies

D. Rosado-Belza (1, 2), J. Falcón-Barroso (1, 2), J. H. Knapen (1, 2), A. Bittner (3, 4), D. A. Gadotti (3), J. Neumann (5), A. de Lorenzo-Cáceres (1, 2), J. Méndez-Abreu (1, 2, 6, 7), M. Querejeta (3, 8), I. Martín-Navarro (1, 2), P. Sánchez-Blázquez (9, 10), P. R. T. Coelho (11), M. Martig (12), G. van de Ven (13), and T. Kim (14)
(1) Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, (2) Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, (3) European Southern Observatory, (4) Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, (5) Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth, (6) Dpto. de Física y del Cosmos, Universidad de Granada, (7) Instituto Carlos I de Física Teórica y Computacional, (8) Observatorio Astronómico Nacional, (9) Departamento de Física de la Tierra y Astrofísica, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, (10) IPARCOS, Facultad de C.C. Físicas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, (11) Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas, Universidade de São Paulo, (12) Astrophysics Research Institute, Liverpool John Moores University, (13) Department of Astrophysics, University of Vienna Türkenschanzstraße, (14) Department of Astronomy and Atmospheric Sciences, Kyungpook National University
Studying the stellar kinematics of galaxies is a key tool in the reconstruction of their evolution. However, the current measurements of the stellar kinematics are complicated by several factors, including dust extinction and the presence of multiple stellar populations. We use integral field spectroscopic data of four galaxies from the TIMER survey to explore and compare the kinematics measured in different spectral regions that are sensitive to distinct stellar populations. We derive the line-of-sight velocity and velocity dispersion of both a young (<2 Gyr) and an old stellar population from the spectral regions around the Hβ line and the Ca II Triplet. In addition we obtain colour excess, mean age, and metallicity. We report a correlation of the colour excess with the difference in the kinematic parameters of the Hβ line and the Ca II Triplet range, which are dominated by young and old stellar populations, respectively. Young stellar populations, located primarily in nuclear rings, have higher velocity dispersions than old ones. These differences in the rings are typically 10 km/s in velocity dispersion, but up to a mean value of 24 km/s in the most extreme case. Trends with age exist in the nuclear rings but are less significant than those with dust extinction. We report different degrees of correlation of these trends among the galaxies in the sample, which are related to the size of the Voronoi bins in their rings. No clear trends for the difference of line-of-sight velocity are observed. The absence of these trends can be explained as a consequence of the masking process of the Hβ line during the kinematic extraction, as confirmed by dedicated simulations. Our study demonstrates that kinematic differences caused by different stellar populations can be identified in the central regions of nearby galaxies even from intermediate resolution spectroscopy. This opens the door to future detailed chemo-kinematic studies of galaxies, but also serves as a warning against deriving kinematics from full-spectrum fitting across very wide wavelength ranges when intense star formation is taking place.

 
Aceptado para publicación en A&A | Enviado el 2020-10-23 | Proyecto P/300724