TREX: Kinematic Characterization of a High-dispersion Intermediate-age Stellar Component in M33

Abstract

The dwarf galaxy Triangulum (M33) presents an interesting testbed for studying stellar halo formation: it is sufficiently massive so as to have likely accreted smaller satellites, but also lies within the regime where feedback and other “in situ” formation mechanisms are expected to play a role. In this work, we analyze the line-of-sight kinematics of stars across M33 from the TREX survey, with a view to understanding the origin of its halo. We split our sample into two broad populations of varying age, comprising 2032 “old” red giant branch stars and 671 “intermediate-age” asymptotic giant branch and carbon stars. We find decisive evidence for two distinct kinematic components in both the old and intermediate-age populations: a low-dispersion (∼22 km s−1) disk-like component corotating with M33's H i gas and a significantly higher-dispersion component (∼50–60 km s−1) that does not rotate in the same plane as the gas and is thus interpreted as M33's stellar halo. While kinematically similar, the fraction of stars associated with the halo component differs significantly between the two populations: this is consistently ∼10% for the intermediate-age population, but decreases from ∼34% to ∼10% as a function of radius for the old population. We additionally find evidence that the intermediate-age halo population is systematically offset from the systemic velocity of M33 by ∼25 km s−1, with a preferred central LOS velocity of ∼ − 155 km s−1. This is the first detection and characterization of an intermediate-age halo in M33, and suggests in situ formation mechanisms, as well as potentially tidal interactions, have helped shaped it.