Bibcode
Zaritsky, D.; Courtois, Helene; Muñoz-Mateos, Juan-Carlos; Sorce, Jenny; Erroz-Ferrer, S.; Comerón, S.; Gadotti, D. A.; Gil de Paz, A.; Hinz, J. L.; Laurikainen, E.; Kim, T.; Laine, J.; Menéndez-Delmestre, K.; Mizusawa, T.; Regan, M. W.; Salo, H.; Seibert, M.; Sheth, K.; Athanassoula, E.; Bosma, A.; Cisternas, M.; Ho, Luis C.; Holwerda, B.
Bibliographical reference
The Astronomical Journal, Volume 147, Issue 6, article id. 134, 11 pp. (2014).
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6
2014
Citations
72
Refereed citations
66
Description
We combine data from the Spitzer Survey for Stellar Structure in
Galaxies, a recently calibrated empirical stellar mass estimator from
Eskew et al., and an extensive database of H I spectral line profiles to
examine the baryonic Tully-Fisher (BTF) relation. We find (1) that the
BTF has lower scatter than the classic Tully-Fisher (TF) relation and is
better described as a linear relationship, confirming similar previous
results, (2) that the inclusion of a radial scale in the BTF decreases
the scatter but only modestly, as seen previously for the TF relation,
and (3) that the slope of the BTF, which we find to be 3.5 ± 0.2
(Δlog M baryon/Δlog vc ), implies that
on average a nearly constant fraction (~0.4) of all baryons expected to
be in a halo are "condensed" onto the central region of rotationally
supported galaxies. The condensed baryon fraction, M baryon/M
total, is, to our measurement precision, nearly independent
of galaxy circular velocity (our sample spans circular velocities, v
c , between 60 and 250 km s–1, but is
extended to vc ~ 10 km s–1 using data from
the literature). The observed galaxy-to-galaxy scatter in this fraction
is generally <= a factor of 2 despite fairly liberal selection
criteria. These results imply that cooling and heating processes, such
as cold versus hot accretion, mass loss due to stellar winds, and active
galactic nucleus driven feedback, to the degree that they affect the
global galactic properties involved in the BTF, are independent of halo
mass for galaxies with 10 < vc < 250 km
s–1 and typically introduce no more than a factor of
two range in the resulting M baryon/M total.
Recent simulations by Aumer et al. of a small sample of disk galaxies
are in excellent agreement with our data, suggesting that current
simulations are capable of reproducing the global properties of
individual disk galaxies. More detailed comparison to models using the
BTF holds great promise, but awaits improved determinations of the
stellar masses.
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