Structure of Disk-dominated Galaxies. I. Bulge/Disk Parameters, Simulations, and Secular Evolution

By L. MacArthur, S. Courteau, J. Holtzman. 2002

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A robust analysis of galaxy structural parameters, based on the modeling of bulge and disk brightnesses in the BVRH bandpasses, is presented for 121 face-on and moderately inclined late-type spirals. Each surface brightness (SB) profile is decomposed into a sum of a generalized Sérsic bulge and an exponential disk. The reliability and limitations of our bulge-to-disk (B/D) decompositions are tested with extensive simulations of galaxy brightness profiles (one-dimensional) and images (two-dimensional). We have used repeat observations to test the consistency of our decompositions. The average systematic model errors are ≲20% and ≲5% for the bulge and disk components, respectively. The final set of galaxy parameters is studied for variations and correlations in the context of profile type differences and wavelength dependencies. Galaxy types are divided into three classes according to their SB profile shapes: Freeman type I, type II, and a third "transition" class for galaxies whose profiles change from type II in the optical to type I in the infrared. Roughly 43%, 44%, and 13% of type I, type II, and transition galaxies, respectively, comprise our sample. Only type I galaxies, with their fully exponential disks, are adequately modeled by our two-component decompositions, and our main results focus on these profiles. We discuss possible interpretations of Freeman type II profiles. The Sérsic bulge shape parameter for nearby type I late-type spirals shows a range between n = 0.1 and 2, but, on average, the underlying surface density profile for the bulge and disk of these galaxies is adequately described by a double-exponential distribution. The distribution of disk scale lengths shows a decreasing trend with increasing wavelength, consistent with a higher concentration of old stars or dust (or both) in the central regions relative to the outer disk. We confirm a coupling between the bulge and disk with a scale length ratio ⟨re/h⟩ = 0.22 ± 0.09, or ⟨hbulge/hdisk⟩ = 0.13 ± 0.06 for late-type spirals, in agreement with recent N-body simulations of disk formation. This ratio increases from ~0.20 for late-type spirals to ~0.24 for earlier types. These observations are consistent with bulges of late-type spiral galaxies being more deeply embedded in their host disk than earlier type bulges. Bulges and disks can thus preserve a nearly constant re/h but show a great range of SB for any given effective radius. The similar scaling relations for early- and late-type spirals suggest comparable formation and/or evolution scenarios for disk galaxies of all Hubble types. In the spirit of Courteau, de Jong, & Broeils but using our new, more extensive database, we interpret this result as further evidence for regulated bulge formation by redistribution of disk material to the galaxy center, in agreement with models of secular evolution of the disk.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3d1949002f2c0b5a53d818b9233d351d09b89c4a

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Citations in the corpus

DETAILED DECOMPOSITION OF GALAXY IMAGES. II. BEYOND AXISYMMETRIC MODELS (2009, background): “D) surface brightness profiles (see also Kormendy 1977; Burstein 1979; Boroson 1981; Kent 1985; Andredakis & Sanders 1994; MacArthur et al. 2003), newer techniques have emerged to directly analyze two-dimensional (2-”
THE STRUCTURE OF CLASSICAL BULGES AND PSEUDOBULGES: THE LINK BETWEEN PSEUDOBULGES AND SÉRSIC INDEX (2008, background): “The average is higher and the scatter is larger than in MacArthur et al. (2003), most likely because our sample targets earlier-type galaxies.”
Dynamical Blueprints for Galaxies (2008, result): “This result is in agreement with studies of bulges in late-type spiral galaxies (Andredakic et al. 1995; Courteau et al. 1996; MacArthur et al. 2003) and suggests that the Galaxy has a pseudobulge rather than a classical bulge (see Kormendy & Kennicutt 2004, for a review).”
Bar Diagnostics in Edge-On Spiral Galaxies. III. N-Body Simulations of Disks (2004, background): “A prominent and steep central peak with quasi-exponential light profile thus appears characteristic of bars in our models, although it would normally be associated with a classical bulge in standard bulge-disk decompositions (e.g., Andredakis et al. 1995; de Jong 1996; MacArthur et al. 2003).”
The Millennium Galaxy Catalogue: bulge–disc decomposition of 10 095 nearby galaxies (2006, background): “Unfortunately, although more accurate functions are available (e.g. MacArthur et al. 2003), this approximation is a fixed feature of the GIM2D code. background pixels to have a value of 0, and pixels that are considered part of objects are assigned values of 1 to N.”
THE LUMINOSITY PROFILE AND STRUCTURAL PARAMETERS OF THE ANDROMEDA GALAXY (2011, background): “Such a dip can be understood through various effects, such as dust extinction (MacArthur et al. 2003, hereafter Mac03) or the mixing action of a dynamical hot stellar bulge or bar (Puglielli et al. 2010).”
Structural Parameters of Thin and Thick Disks in Edge-on Disk Galaxies (2005, methodology): “In Figure 3 we compare our single-disk R- and B-band fitted scale lengths with the edge-on sample of Kregel et al. (2002) and the face-onmeasurements of MacArthur et al. (2003), de Jong (1996), and Swaters&Balcells (2002).”
Broadband Imaging of a Large Sample of Irregular Galaxies (2005, background): “(See also some of the surface brightness profiles of spirals shown by Bell et al. 2000 and MacArthur et al. 2003.)”
The Secular Evolution of Disk Structural Parameters (2005, methodology): “Comparison between bulge and disk parameters shows a correlation between the scale-lengths of bulges and disks (de Jong 1996; MacArthur et al. 2003) and, on average, similar colors in bulges and inner disks (Terndrup et al. 1994; Peletier & Balcells 1996; Courteau et al. 1996; Carollo et al. 2001).”
The population of barred galaxies in the local universe - I. Detection and characterisation of bars (2009, methodology): “The adopted ranges for the effective radius of the bulge, scale-length of the disc, and bar length were selected according to the values measured for spiral galaxies by Möllenhoff & Heidt (2001), MacArthur et al. (2003), Möllenhoff (2004), Laurikainen et al. (2007), and Méndez-Abreu et al. (2008a).”
The structure of galactic disks - Studying late-type spiral galaxies using SDSS (2006, methodology): “Most of the detailed structural studies of nearby disk galaxies so far (Courteau, 1996; de Jong, 1996; Graham, 2001; Jansen & Kannappan, 2001; Trujillo et al., 2002; MacArthur et al., 2003; Möllenhoff, 2004) have been concentrated on the (most easily accessible) inner parts of the galaxies.”
Simulations of Galaxy Formation in a Λ Cold Dark Matter Universe. I. Dynamical and Photometric Properties of a Simulated Disk Galaxy (2002, background): “The values in the redder bands are in excellent agreement with observation, although those in the UV and blue bands seem systematically low (MacArthur et al. 2003).”
Dark halo response and the stellar initial mass function in early-type and late-type galaxies (2010, background): “Observations of face-on disk galaxies yield B-band sizes that are ≃ 0.03 dex larger than V -band sizes, and that are ≃ 0.06 dex larger than R-band sizes (MacArthur et al. 2003).”