Tidally Induced Morphology of M33 in Hydrodynamical Simulations of Its Recent Interaction with M31

We present a hydrodynamical model of M33 and its recent interaction with M31. This scenario was previously proposed in the literature in order to explain the distorted gaseous and stellar disks of M33, as well as the increased star formation rate in both objects around 2 Gyr ago. We used an orbit in...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Astrophysical journal. Letters 2018-09, Vol.864 (1), p.34
Main Authors: Semczuk, Marcin, okas, Ewa L., Salomon, Jean-Baptiste, Athanassoula, E., D'Onghia, Elena
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Astrophysics
Computer simulation
Dark matter
Galactic structure
Galaxies
galaxies: evolution
galaxies: individual (M33)
galaxies: interactions
galaxies: kinematics and dynamics
galaxies: structure
Local Group
Morphology
Physics
Ram pressure
Simulation
Spiral galaxies
Star & galaxy formation
Star formation
Star formation rate
Stellar models
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Summary:We present a hydrodynamical model of M33 and its recent interaction with M31. This scenario was previously proposed in the literature in order to explain the distorted gaseous and stellar disks of M33, as well as the increased star formation rate in both objects around 2 Gyr ago. We used an orbit integration scheme to find which estimate of the transverse velocity of M31 favors the interaction scenario more and then tried to reproduce it in our simulations. M33 was modeled as a stellar and gaseous disk embedded in a live dark matter halo, while M31 was approximated only with a live dark halo. In the simulations, the two galaxies passed each other with a pericenter distance of 37 kpc. Tides excited a two-armed spiral structure in the M33 disk, which is found to be the predominant spiral signal in the observed galaxy and has long been known as a feature easily induced by tidal interactions. We found that the gaseous warp produced by the interaction did not resemble enough the observed one, and we performed an additional simulation including the hot gas halo of M31 to show that this feature can be properly reproduced by tidal forces and ram pressure stripping acting simultaneously on the gaseous disk. In addition to the spiral arms, tidal forces produced a stellar stream similar to the one observed and triggered a star formation burst at radii similar to where it is observed.
ISSN:0004-637X
2041-8205
1538-4357
2041-8213
DOI:10.3847/1538-4357/aad4ae