The Angular Momentum of Gas in Proto-Galaxies: II -- The Impact of Preheating

Abstract

We examine the effect of preheating of the intergalactic medium on galaxy formation using cosmological hydrodynamical simulations. By performing simulations both with and without a simple model for preheating, we analyse and compare the angular momentum distributions of the dark matter and the baryons. Preheating unbinds baryons from their dark matter haloes, yielding a baryonic mass fraction that declines with decreasing halo mass. In addition, the spin parameter of the gas is reduced with respect to the case without preheating, while the misalignment between the angular momentum directions of the gas and dark matter increases strongly. The angular momentum distributions of individual haloes reveal that preheating decreases (increases) the mass fraction with low (negative) specific angular momentum. We discuss the implications of these findings for the formation of disk galaxies in a preheated intergalactic medium, and compare our results to the predictions of Maller & Dekel (2002), who propose an alternative interpretation for the origin of the angular momentum of (proto)-galaxies.