English

Chemical abundances and gas content in disk galaxies: correlations with the $\lambda$ spin parameter

Astrophysics 2008-10-06 v2

Abstract

By using a very simple and general model to describe the dynamics of disk galaxies, we estimate the λ\lambda spin parameter for a sample of observed galaxies and present a study in which we show that several important physical properties are intrinsically related to the dynamics of the systems. Although correlations between average metallicity with magnitude or Hubble type are evident, we obtain equally strong correlations with the spin parameter, where galaxies with low λ\lambda values present higher abundances and galaxies with high λ\lambda values are poor in metals. Also, the gas content of the galaxies correlates with λ\lambda, with high λ\lambda systems showing higher gas mass fractions than low λ\lambda galaxies, highlighting the important role this parameter plays in the structure of disk galaxies and the proposal of λ\lambda as a robust and objective physical measure of galactic morphology.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0802.3689,
  title  = {Chemical abundances and gas content in disk galaxies: correlations with the $\lambda$ spin parameter},
  author = {B. Cervantes-Sodi and X. Hernandez},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0802.3689},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

10 pages, 5 figures. Accepted for publication in RevMexA&A

R2 v1 2026-06-21T10:15:47.071Z