Using the Simba cosmological simulations to measure the planar relation between stellar specific angular momentum, mass and effective surface brightness

Stellar mass and specific angular momentum are two properties of a galaxy that are directly related to its formation history, and hence morphology. In this work, the tight planar relationship between stellar specific angular momentum (j*), mass (M*) and mean effective surface brightness (<μeff >) that was recently constrained using ALFALFA galaxies is measured more accurately using galaxies from the Simba cosmological simulation. The distribution of 179 Simba galaxies in log10j* − log10M* - <μeff > space is shown to be very tightly planar with $j_*\propto M_*^{0.694}$ and the distribution of perpendicular distances between the galaxies and the plane being approximately Gaussian with rms = 0.057 dex. The parameterised distribution is used with existing j* and <μeff > measurements of 3 607 ALFALFA galaxies and 84 SPARC galaxies to reliably predict their published stellar masses to within ∼0.1 to 0.2 dex over several decades of stellar mass. Thus, this work presents a new method of easily generating accurate galaxy stellar mass estimates for late-type galaxies and provides a new measurement of the fundamental link between galaxy morphology, mass and angular momentum.