Kinematic differences between multiple populations in Galactic globular clusters

Abstract

Aims. The formation process of multiple populations in globular clusters is still up for debate. These populations are characterized by different light-element abundances. Kinematic differences between the populations are particularly interesting in this respect because they allow us to distinguish between single-epoch formation scenarios and multi-epoch formation scenarios. We derive rotation and dispersion profiles for 25 globular clusters and aimed to find kinematic differences between multiple populations to constrain their formation process. Methods. We split red-giant-branch (RGB) stars in each cluster into three populations (P1, P2, and P3) for the type-II clusters and two populations (P1 and P2) otherwise using Hubble photometry. We derived the global rotation and dispersion profiles for each cluster by using all stars with radial velocity measurements obtained from MUSE spectroscopy. We also derived these profiles for the individual populations of each cluster. Based on the rotation and dispersion profiles, we calculated the rotation strength in terms of ordered-over-random motion, (v/σ)HL, evaluated at the half-light radius of the cluster. We then consistently analyzed all clusters for differences in the rotation strength of their populations. Results. We detect rotation in all but four clusters. For NGC 104, NGC 1851, NGC 2808, NGC 5286, NGC 5904, NGC 6093, NGC 6388, NGC 6541, NGC 7078, and NGC 7089, we also detect rotation for P1 and/or P2 stars. For NGC 2808, NGC 6093, and NGC 7078 we find differences in (v/σ)HL between P1 and P2 that are larger than 1σ. Whereas we find that P2 rotates faster than P1 for NGC 6093 and NGC 7078, the opposite is true for NGC 2808. However, even for these three clusters the differences are still of low significance. We find that the rotation strength of a cluster generally scales with its median relaxation time. For P1 and P2 the corresponding relation is very weak at best. We observe no correlation between the difference in rotation strength between P1 and P2 and the cluster relaxation time. The stellar radial velocities derived from MUSE data that this analysis is based on are made publicly available.