Bibcode
Trujillo, I.; Graham, Alister W.; Caon, N.
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 326, Issue 3, pp. 869-876.
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9
2001
Citations
163
Refereed citations
147
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.