Gas and stellar kinematic misalignment in MaNGA galaxies: what is the origin of counter-rotating gas?

Kinematic misalignment between gas and stellar components observed in a certain fraction of galaxies. It believed to be caused by acquisition of gas from the external reservoir by major or minor mergers, accretion from cosmological filaments or circumgalactic medium, etc. We aim to constrain possible sources of the gas that forms counter-rotating component. We derived the gas-phase oxygen abundance in 69 galaxies with kinematic misalignment between gas and stellar components from MaNGA DR17 survey and compared it with the metallicity expected according to the mass-metallicity relation. We found that the oxygen abundance of the counter-rotating gas in our sample is higher than 8.2 dex that excludes significant role of inflow of pristine gas. Meanwhile, there is a significant difference in the oxygen abundance of the counter-rotating gas between red and blue galaxies. In general, the oxygen abundance is lower than expected for their stellar mass in red galaxies, but is compatible with or even higher than typical values for their stellar mass in blue galaxies. We showed that the exchange of enriched gas between galaxies is the most plausible mechanism for explaining the metallicity of counter-rotating gas components in galaxies of all masses and colors. Meanwhile, minor mergers may play a significant role in the formation of counter-rotating gas components in red and quenched galaxies.
Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in A&A Letters