Dynamical Tidal Locking Theory: A New Source of the Spin of Dark Matter Halos

We revisit the question of what mechanism is responsible for the spins of halos of dark matter. The answer to this question is of high importance for modeling galaxy intrinsic alignment, which can potentially contaminate current and future lensing data. In particular, we show that when the dark matter halos pass nearly each other in dense environments—namely halo assemblies—they swing and spin each other via exerting mutual tidal torques. We show that this has a significant contribution to the spin of dark matter halos comparable to that calculated by the so-called tidal torque theory. We use the results of the state-of-the-art simulation of Illutris to check the prediction of this theory against the simulation data.