On the estimation of galaxy structural parameters: the Sérsic model

Trujillo, I.; Graham, Alister W.; Caon, N.
Bibliographical reference

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 326, Issue 3, pp. 869-876.

Advertised on:
9
2001
Number of authors
3
IAC number of authors
3
Citations
160
Refereed citations
145
Description
This paper addresses some questions which have arisen from the use of the Sérsic r1/n law in modelling the luminosity profiles of early-type galaxies. The first issue deals with the trend between the half-light radius and the structural parameter n. We show that the correlation between these two parameters is not only real, but also a natural consequence from the previous relations found to exist between the model-independent parameters: total luminosity, effective radius and effective surface brightness. We also define a new galaxy concentration index which is largely independent of the image exposure depth, and is shown to be monotonically related with n. The second question concerns the curious coincidence between the form of the Fundamental Plane and the coupling between e and re when modelling a light profile. We explain, through a mathematical analysis of the Sérsic law, why the quantity ree0.7 appears almost constant for an individual galaxy, regardless of the value of n (over a large range) adopted in the fit to the light profile. Consequently, Fundamental Planes of the form ree0.7~σ0x (for any x, and where σ0 is the central galaxy velocity dispersion) are insensitive to galaxy structure. Finally, we address the problematic issue of the use of model-dependent galaxy light-profile parameters versus model-independent quantities for the half-light radii, mean surface brightness and total galaxy magnitude. The former implicitly assume that the light-profile model can be extrapolated to infinity, while the latter quantities, in general, are derived from a signal-to-noise ratio truncated profile. We quantify (mathematically) how these parameters change as one reduces the outer radius of an r1/n profile, and reveal how these can vary substantially when n>=4.