The formation of low surface brightness galaxies in the IllustrisTNG simulation

ABSTRACT We explore the nature of low surface brightness galaxies (LSBGs) in the hydrodynamic cosmological simulation TNG100 of the IllustrisTNG project, selecting a sample of LSBGs (r band effective surface brightness μr 22.0 mag arcsec−2) at z = 0 over a wide range of stellar masses (M* = 109–1012 M⊙). We find LSBGs of all stellar masses, although they are particularly prevalent at M* 1010 M⊙. We show that the specific star formation rates of LSBGs are not significantly different from those of high surface brightness galaxies (HSBGs) but that, as a population, LSBGs are systematically less massive and more extended than HSBGs, and tend to display late-type morphologies according to a kinematic criterion. At fixed stellar mass, we find that haloes hosting LSBGs are systematically more massive and have a higher baryonic fraction than those hosting HSBGs. We find that LSBGs have higher stellar specific angular momentum and halo spin parameter values compared to HSBGs, as suggested by previous works. We track the evolution of these quantities back in time, finding that the spin parameters of the haloes hosting LSBGs and HSBGs exhibit a clear bifurcation at z ∼ 2, which causes a similar separation in the evolutionary tracks of other properties such as galactic angular momentum and effective radius, ultimately resulting in the values observed at z = 0. The higher values of specific stellar angular momentum and halo spin in LSBGs seem to be responsible for their extended nature, preventing material from collapsing into the central regions of the galaxies, and also causing LSBGs to host less massive black holes at their centres.