English

New axes for the fundamental plane

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2015-11-17 v2

Abstract

We argue that the stellar velocity dispersion observed in an elliptical galaxy is a good proxy for the halo velocity dispersion. As dark matter halos are almost completely characterized by a single scale parameter, the stellar velocity dispersion tells us the virial radius of the halo and the mass contained within. This permits non-dimensionalizing of the stellar mass and effective radius axes of the stellar mass fundamental plane by the virial radius and halo mass, respectively.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1508.02358,
  title  = {New axes for the fundamental plane},
  author = {Paul L. Schechter},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1508.02358},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

4 pages. Contribution to IAU Symposium 317 "The General Assembly of Halos" edited by A. Bragaglia, M. Arnaboldi, M. Rejkuba & D. Romano. Four typos corrected

R2 v1 2026-06-22T10:30:20.865Z