Distinguishing the formation paths of massive compact early-type galaxies through their internal dynamical structures

¹ Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 80 Nandan Road, Shanghai 200030, China
² Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Av. Bento Gonçalves 9500, Porto Alegre, R.S. 90040-060, Brazil

^⋆ Corresponding author: lzhu@shao.ac.cn

Received: 20 November 2024
Accepted: 11 April 2025

Abstract

Massive early-type galaxies (ETGs) are thought to form in two phases: an initial phase of rapid star formation and a later phase of mergers. A small fraction of these galaxies, referred to as ‘red nuggets’, formed during the first phase may have survived largely unaltered to the present day, having experienced no massive mergers since z ∼ 2. Nearby massive compact ETGs are considered candidates for such relic galaxies. We studied the internal dynamical structures of 15 compact ETGs with existing integral field unit (IFU) observations and 79 compact ETGs from the TNG50 simulation. We dynamically decomposed each galaxy into a disk, bulge, and hot inner stellar halo for both observations and simulations. In TNG50, the luminosity fraction of the hot inner stellar halo (or the size of the spheroid, which includes the bulge and halo) strongly correlates with the galaxy’s merger history. The true ‘merger-free’ galaxies show an extremely low fraction of hot inner stellar halo (or an extremely compact spheroid). Although such compactness could result from the tidal stripping of satellites, tidal forces would also destroy the dynamically cold disk (if one exists) when the halo is removed. Thus, a galaxy is guaranteed to be merger-free if it has a very low fraction of the hot inner stellar halo and retains a dynamically cold disk. Comparing observed galaxies with TNG50, we identify seven of the 15 compact ETGs (PGC 11179, UGC 3816, NGC 2767, NGC 1277, PGC 32873, PGC 12562, and PGC 70520) as true merger-free galaxies. These galaxies have compact, massive bulges that likely formed through secular heating, as supported by their TNG50 analogues.