English

The empirical laws of galaxy dynamics: from gas kinematics to weak lensing

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2024-11-06 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

Galaxies obey a set of strict dynamical laws, which imply a close coupling between the visible matter (stars and gas) and the observed dynamics (set by dark matter in the standard cosmological context). Here we review recent results from weak gravitational lensing, which allows studying the empirical laws of galaxy dynamics out to exceedingly large radii in both late-type galaxies (LTGs) and early-type galaxies (ETGs). We focus on three laws: (1) the circular velocity curves of both LTGs and ETGs remain indefinitely flat out to several hundreds of kpc; (2) the same baryonic Tully-Fisher relation is followed by LTGs and ETGs; (3) the same radial acceleration relation (RAR) is followed by LTGs and ETGs. Combining galaxy data with Solar System data, the RAR covers about 16 orders of magnitude in the Newtonian baryonic acceleration. Remarkably, these empirical facts were predicted a priori by MOND.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2411.02499,
  title  = {The empirical laws of galaxy dynamics: from gas kinematics to weak lensing},
  author = {Federico Lelli and Tobias Mistele and Stacy S. McGaugh and James M. Schombert and Pengfei Li},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.02499},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

Invited review for the IAU General Assembly 2024, Focus Meeting 9 (6 pages, 3 figures)