English

Globular Cluster Systems in Dwarf Galaxies: Catalogs and Comparisons

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2025-12-10 v1

Abstract

The connection between a galaxy's total globular cluster system (GCS) mass and its halo mass has been studied for decades and it has been found that galaxies at nearly all observed masses adhere to a linear scaling relation between these properties. However, while we have ample, homogeneous data for galaxies with halo masses Mh1010MM_h \gtrsim 10^{10} M_{\odot} the data available for low-mass galaxies is more sparse, and both GCS mass and halo mass estimates are determined using varying methodologies. This work compiles all available literature data for dwarf galaxies with confident stellar mass and GC count estimates, and converts these estimates to GCS masses and peak halo masses using a standard conversion. This allows for a consistent comparison of these masses to be made and a complete study of the behaviour of the MGCSMhM_{GCS}-M_h relation to be conducted. We compare the positions of classical dwarfs on the scaling relation to that of ultra diffuse galaxies and extremely low-surface brightness galaxies and find that these non-classical dwarfs have, on average, systematically higher GC specific frequencies. This also makes them, on average, systematically positively offset from the MGCSMhM_{GCS}-M_h relation, driving much of the high-MGCSM_{GCS} scatter observed.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.08453,
  title  = {Globular Cluster Systems in Dwarf Galaxies: Catalogs and Comparisons},
  author = {Veronika Dornan and William E. Harris},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.08453},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

22 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:16:38.663Z