English

The Baryonic Tully-Fisher Relation

Astrophysics 2009-10-31 v1

Abstract

We explore the Tully-Fisher relation over five decades in stellar mass in galaxies with circular velocities ranging over 30 < Vc < 300 km/s. We find a clear break in the optical Tully-Fisher relation: field galaxies with Vc < 90 km/s fall below the relation defined by brighter galaxies. These faint galaxies are however very gas rich; adding in the gas mass and plotting baryonic disk mass Md = M* + Mg in place of luminosity restores a single linear relation. The Tully-Fisher relation thus appears fundamentally to be a relation between rotation velocity and total baryonic mass of the form Md = A Vc^4.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0003001,
  title  = {The Baryonic Tully-Fisher Relation},
  author = {Stacy McGaugh and Jim Schombert and Greg Bothun and Erwin de Blok},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0003001},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

10 pages including 1 color figure. Accepted for publication in ApJ Letters