Relationship between kinematic settling and morphological transformation

Determine whether kinematic settling in galaxies is necessarily accompanied by a corresponding morphological transformation, thereby establishing whether morphological and kinematic order evolve in tandem.

Background

The paper examines whether strongly asymmetric tadpole galaxies can retain coherent, galaxy-scale gaseous kinematics. It distinguishes kinematic settling—the emergence of increasingly ordered or rotation-like motions—from morphological transformation toward more symmetric disk or spheroidal structures.

The authors note that gas accretion, angular-momentum redistribution, dissipation, interactions, and mergers can affect morphology and kinematics differently. Their observations suggest that morphological and kinematic settlement may occur at different times, but the causal relationship between the two processes remains unresolved.