3,319 research outputs found
Testing Modified Newtonian Dynamics with Rotation Curves of Dwarf and Low Surface Brightness Galaxies
Dwarf and low surface brightness galaxies are ideal objects to test modified
Newtonian dynamics (MOND), because in most of these galaxies the accelerations
fall below the threshold below where MOND supposedly applies. We have selected
from the literature a sample of 27 dwarf and low surface brightness galaxies.
MOND is successful in explaining the general shape of the observed rotation
curves for roughly three quarters of the galaxies in the sample presented here.
However, for the remaining quarter, MOND does not adequately explain the
observed rotation curves. Considering the uncertainties in distances and
inclinations for the galaxies in our sample, a small fraction of poor MOND
predictions is expected and is not necessarily a problem for MOND. We have also
made fits taking the MOND acceleration constant, a_0, as a free parameter in
order to identify any systematic trends. We find that there appears to be a
correlation between central surface brightness and the best-fit value of a_0,
in the sense that lower surface brightness galaxies tend to have lower a_0.
However, this correlation depends strongly on a small number of galaxies whose
rotation curves might be uncertain due to either bars or warps. Without these
galaxies, there is less evidence of a trend, but the average value we find for
a_0 ~ 0.7*10^-8 cm s^-2 is somewhat lower than derived from previous studies.
Such lower fitted values of a_0 could occur if external gravitational fields
are important.Comment: 12 pages, accepted for publication in Ap
Key Distributions for Charmless Semileptonic B Decay
We present theoretical predictions for a few phenomenologically interesting
distributions in the semileptonic b->u decays which are affected by Fermi
motion. The perturbative effects are incorporated at the one-loop level and
appear to be very moderate. Our treatment of Fermi motion is based directly on
QCD, being encoded in the universal distribution function F(x). The decay
distributions in the charged lepton energy, invariant mass of hadrons, hadron
energy, and q^2 are given. We note that typically about 90% of all decay events
are expected to have M_X < M_D; this feature can be exploited in determination
of |V_ub|.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures (incorporated in the LaTeX file); plain LaTe
Spectroscopy of Low Surface Brightness Galaxies with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope
We have obtained low resolution spectra of nineteen red and blue low surface
brightness galaxies, using the Marcario Low Resolution Spectrograph on the 9.2m
Hobby-Eberly Telescope. These galaxies form a very heterogeneous class, whose
spectra qualitatively resemble those of high surface brightness galaxies
covering the full range of spectra seen in galaxies of Hubble types from E to
Irr. We use a combination of emission line (EW(Halpha), NII/Halpha) and
absorption line (Mgb, Hbeta, ) based diagnostics to investigate the
star-formation and chemical enrichment histories of these galaxies. These are
diverse, with some galaxies having low metallicity and very young mean stellar
ages, and other galaxies showing old, super-solar metallicity stellar
populations. In contrast with some previous studies which found a strong trend
of decreasing metallicity with decreasing central surface brightness, we find a
population of galaxies with low surface brightness and near-solar metallicity.
Correlations between several of the gas phase and stellar population age and
metallicity indicators are used to place contraints on plausible evolutionary
scenarios for LSB galaxies. The redshift range spanned by these galaxies is
broad, with radial velocities from 3400 km/s to more than 65000 km/s. A subset
of the sample galaxies have published HI redshifts and gas masses based on
observations with the Arecibo 305m single-dish radio telescope, which place
these galaxies far off of the mean Tully-Fisher relation. Our new optical
redshifts do not agree with the published HI redshifts for these galaxies. Most
of the discrepancies can be explained by beam confusion in the Arecibo
observations, causing erroneous HI detections for some of the galaxies.Comment: 31 pages, 12 figures, 7 tables. Uses emulateapj5.sty and
onecolfloat5.sty, which are included. Accepted for publication in the
Astronomical Journa
Testing the Hypothesis of Modified Dynamics with Low Surface Brightness Galaxies and Other Evidence
The rotation curves of low surface brightness galaxies provide a unique data
set with which to test alternative theories of gravitation over a large dynamic
range in size, mass, surface density, and acceleration. Many clearly fail,
including any in which the mass discrepancy appears at a particular
length-scale. One hypothesis, MOND [Milgrom 1983, ApJ, 270, 371], is consistent
with the data. Indeed, it accurately predicts the observed behavior. We find no
evidence on any scale which clearly contradicts MOND, and a good deal which
supports it.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. 35 pages
AAStex + 9 figures. This result surprised the bejeepers out of us, to
Star Formation in Dwarf Galaxies
We explore mechanisms for the regulation of star formation in dwarf galaxies.
We concentrate primarily on a sample in the Virgo cluster, which has HI and
blue total photometry, for which we collected H data at the Wise
Observatory. We find that dwarf galaxies do not show the tight correlation of
the surface brightness of H (a star formation indicator) with the HI
surface density, or with the ratio of this density to a dynamical timescale, as
found for large disk or starburst galaxies. On the other hand, we find the
strongest correlation to be with the average blue surface brightness,
indicating the presence of a mechanism regulating the star formation by the
older (up to 1 Gyr) stellar population if present, or by the stellar population
already formed in the present burst.Comment: 15 pages (LATEX aasms4 style) and three postscript figures, accepted
for publication in the Astrophysical Journa
A Morphological-type dependence in the mu_0-log(h) plane of Spiral galaxy disks
We present observational evidence for a galaxy `Type' dependence to the
location of a spiral galaxy's disk parameters in the mu_0-log(h) (central disk
surface-brightness - disk scale-length) plane. With a sample of ~40 Low Surface
Brightness galaxies (both bulge- and disk-dominated) and ~80 High Surface
Brightness galaxies, the early-type disk galaxies (<=Sc) tend to define a
bright envelope in the mu_0-log(h) plane, while the late-type (>=Scd) spiral
galaxies have, in general, smaller and fainter disks. Below the defining
surface brightness threshold for a Low Surface Brightness galaxy (i.e. more
than 1 mag fainter than the 21.65 B-mag arcsec^(-2) Freeman value), the
early-type spiral galaxies have scale-lengths greater than 8-9 kpc, while the
late-type spiral galaxies have smaller scale-lengths. All galaxies have been
modelled with a seeing-convolved Sersic r^(1/n) bulge and exponential disk
model. We show that the trend of decreasing bulge shape parameter (n) with
increasing Hubble type and decreasing bulge-to-disk luminosity ratio, which has
been observed amongst the High Surface Brightness galaxies, extends to the Low
Surface Brightness galaxies, revealing a continuous range of structural
parameters.Comment: To be published in ApJ. Inc. three two-part figure
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