On the Angular Momentum History of Galactic Disks

Abstract

The stellar mass, size and rotational velocity of galactic disks all grow from redshift ~2 to the present by amounts that are estimated from observationally derived scaling relations. The product of these three quantities, the angular momentum of stellar disks, is then estimated to grow by a remarkably large factor, between ~20 and ~50, whereas other evidences suggest a more moderate increase. This requires that the specific angular momentum of the accreted gas should systematically increase with time while remaining co-rotational with the disk over most of the last ~10 Gyr. Thus, the baryonic gas vorticity of the circumgalactic medium appears to emerge as a major driver in galaxy evolution, and this paper is meant to attract attention on the sheer size of the angular momentum increase and on the need to explore to which extent this can be observed in nature and/or in simulations.