Reconstructing the Assembly of Massive Galaxies. III. Quiescent Galaxies Lose Angular Momentum as They Evolve in a Mass-dependent Fashion

Abstract We study the evolution of stellar kinematics of a sample of 952 massive quiescent galaxies with M * > 10 10.5 M ⊙ at 0.6 σ star ′ ) and the morphological axial ratio ( q ), and its variation with the stellar age and mass of quiescent galaxies. For the youngest quiescent galaxies, regardless of stellar mass, σ star ′ decreases with increasing q , a trend that is consistent with a system having significant rotation and hence suggests that massive galaxies still retain a significant amount of angular momentum in the aftermath of quenching. As they continue to evolve, the variation of the σ star ′ - q relationship depends on stellar mass. For quiescent galaxies with M * σ star ′ decreases with q in all stellar-age bins, suggesting that the quiescent populations of this mass regime retain significant rotation even a long time after quenching. In contrast, for more massive quiescent galaxies with M * > 10 11.3 M ⊙ , the relationship between σ star ′ and q becomes significantly flattened with increasing stellar age. This indicates that, as the very massive galaxy populations continue to evolve after quenching, angular momentum gradually reduces, which eventually transforms them into velocity-dispersion supported systems. We suggest that incoherent, continuous merging and accretion events onto the galaxies are the main drivers of the observed mass-dependent, postquenching dynamical evolution because more massive galaxies are more likely to undergo such interactions. We are witnessing the early formation epoch of fast and slow rotators at z ∼ 0.8, when the Universe was only half of its current age.