The morphology of star-forming gas and its alignment with galaxies and dark matter haloes in the EAGLE simulations

Abstract

ABSTRACT We present measurements of the morphology of star-forming gas in galaxies from the EAGLE simulations, and its alignment relative to stars and dark matter (DM). Imaging of such gas in the radio continuum enables weak lensing experiments that complement traditional optical approaches. Star-forming gas is typically more flattened than the stars and DM within halo centres, particularly for present-day structures of total mass $\sim 10^{12-12.5}\, {\rm M}_\odot$, which preferentially host star-forming galaxies with rotationally supported stellar discs. Such systems have oblate, spheroidal star-forming gas distributions, but in both less- and more-massive subhaloes the distributions tend to be prolate, and its morphology correlates positively and significantly with that of its host galaxy’s stars, both in terms of sphericity and triaxiality. The minor axis of star-forming gas most commonly aligns with the minor axis of its host subhalo’s central DM distribution, but this alignment is often poor in subhaloes with a prolate DM distribution. Star-forming gas aligns with the DM at the centre of its parent subhalo less strongly than is the case for stars, but its morphological minor axis aligns closely with its kinematic axis, affording a route to observational identification of the unsheared morphological axis. The projected ellipticities of star-forming gas in EAGLE are consistent with shapes inferred from high-fidelity radio continuum images, and they exhibit greater shape noise than is the case for images of the stars, owing to the greater characteristic flattening of star-forming gas with respect to stars.