
arXiv: 2506.20002
We present a preliminary study exploring whether the stellar orbital circularity of simulated galaxies, available from precomputed catalogs in the IllustrisTNG project, can be used as a proxy for a broad morphological classification. We focus on the publicly available "Stellar Circularities, Angular Momenta, Axis Ratios" catalog, which enables a simple kinematic decomposition of the stellar component into disk and spheroid subsystems. By validating this approach against the more detailed five-component kinematic decomposition in TNG50, we confirm that the circularity-based disk fraction correlates most strongly with the thin disk, while the bulge fraction broadly represents the combined contribution of classical bulges and stellar halos. We then apply this decomposition to galaxies in the TNG100 simulation at redshift z = 0 and identify a data-motivated threshold of Fdisk = 0:25 to distinguish early- and late-type galaxies. This threshold, being lower than the commonly adopted value of 0:4, better captures the diversity of disk-dominated systems and avoids excluding galaxies with moderately prominent disks. Additionally, we identify irregular or morphologically complex systems based on galaxies with low total disk and spheroid mass fractions. Using this classification, we recover a morphology-density relation that is broadly consistent with observations: the late-type galaxies dominate in the field, while the early-type galaxies are the most prevalent morphological type in clusters. Our results demonstrate that stellar circularity alone can serve as an accessible and computationally efficient morphological proxy. We also discuss the potential for this classification to support machine learning efforts as a baseline or training set for future morphological studies.
methods: statistical, Astrophysics of Galaxies, Astronomy, Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA), galaxies: structure, FOS: Physical sciences, QB1-991, astronomical databases: miscellaneous, galaxies: kinematics and dynamics, methods: numerical
methods: statistical, Astrophysics of Galaxies, Astronomy, Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA), galaxies: structure, FOS: Physical sciences, QB1-991, astronomical databases: miscellaneous, galaxies: kinematics and dynamics, methods: numerical
| selected citations These citations are derived from selected sources. This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | 0 | |
| popularity This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network. | Average | |
| influence This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | Average | |
| impulse This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network. | Average |
