The SAMI Galaxy Survey: mass as the driver of the kinematic morphology - density relation in clusters

Abstract

We examine the kinematic morphology of early-type galaxies (ETGs) in eight galaxy clusters in the Sydney-AAO Multi-object Integral field spectrograph (SAMI) Galaxy Survey. The clusters cover a mass range of 14.2<log(M_200/M_odot)<15.2 and we measure spatially-resolved stellar kinematics for 315 member galaxies with stellar masses 10.0<log(M_*/M_odot)<11.7 within 1R_200 of the cluster centers. We calculate the spin parameter, lambda_R and use that to classify the kinematic morphology of the galaxies as fast or slow rotators. The total fraction of slow rotators in the early-type galaxy population, F_SR=0.14+/-0.02 and does not depend on host cluster mass. Across the eight clusters, the fraction of slow rotators increases with increasing local overdensity. We also find that the slow-rotator fraction increases at small clustercentric radii (R_cl<0.3R_200), and note that there is also an increase in slow-rotator fraction at R_cl~0.6R_200. The slow rotators at these larger radii reside in cluster substructure. We find the strongest increase in slow-rotator fraction occurs with increasing stellar mass. After accounting for the strong correlation with stellar mass, we find no significant relationship between spin parameter and local overdensity in the cluster environment. We conclude that the primary driver for the kinematic morphology--density relationship in galaxy clusters is the changing distribution of galaxy stellar mass with local environment. The presence of slow rotators in substructure suggests that the cluster kinematic morphology--density relationship is a result of mass segregation of slow-rotating galaxies forming in groups that later merge with clusters and sink to the cluster center via dynamical friction.