ON THE 'INITIAL' ANGULAR MOMENTUM OF GALAXIES

Abstract

Spherical density profiles and specific angular momentum profiles of Dark Matter halos found in cosmological N-body simulations have been measured extensively. The distribution of the total angular momentum of dark matter halos is also used routinely in semi-analytic modeling of the formation of disk galaxies. However, it is unclear whether the initial (i.e. at the time the halo is assembled) angular momentum distributions of baryons is related to the dark matter at all. Theoretical models for ellipticities in weak lensing studies often rely on an assumed correlation of the angular momentum vectors of dark matter and gas in galaxies. Both of these assumptions are shown to be in reasonable agreement with high resolution cosmological smoothed particle hydrodynamical simulations that follow the dark matter as long as only adiabatic gas physics are included. However, we argue that in more realistic models of galaxy formation one expects pressure forces to play a significant role at turn--around. Consequently the torquing force on DM and baryons will be uncorrelated and their respective angular momenta are not expected to align. An SPH simulation with ad-hoc feedback is presented that illustrates these effects. Massive low redshift elliptical galaxies may be a notable exception where "light may trace mass".