Evidence for Tidal Heating in the Dynamics of LMC Carbon Stars and Red Supergiants

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

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Scientific paper

We present an analysis of the kinematics of the HI gas, carbon stars, and red supergiants of the Large Magellanic Cloud. After correcting the line-of-sight velocities for the recent accurate measurement of the LMC's space motion, we find that each kinematic tracer clearly defines a flat rotation curve with similar shape but different amplitude for each tracer: 61 km s-1 for the carbon stars, 80 km s-1 for the HI gas, and 107 km s-1 for the red supergiants. We suggest that noncircular motions of the stars and gas in the LMC can at least in part explain the different rotation amplitudes. A significant fraction, 7-15%, of the total sample of carbon stars appears to be associated with previously identified tidal HI streamers. In addition, although the local velocity dispersion of the red supergiants is small, 8 km s-1, their velocity dispersion about the carbon star rotation solution is 17 km s-1, equal to the velocity dispersion of the carbon stars themselves. We thus appear to be witnessing the tidal heating of the LMC's stellar populations.

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