The Mass Discrepancy-Acceleration Relation: Disk Mass and the Dark Matter Distribution

By S. McGaugh. 2004

195 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The mass discrepancy in disk galaxies is shown to be well correlated with acceleration, increasing systematically with decreasing acceleration below a critical scale a0 ≈ 3700 km2 s-2 kpc-1 = 1.2 × 10-10 m s-2. For each galaxy, there is an optimal choice of stellar mass-to-light ratio that minimizes the scatter in this mass discrepancy-acceleration relation. The same mass-to-light ratios also minimize the scatter in the baryonic Tully-Fisher relation and are in excellent agreement with the expectations of stellar population synthesis. Once the disk mass is determined in this fashion, the dark matter distribution is specified. The circular velocity attributable to the dark matter can be expressed as a simple equation that depends only on the observed distribution of baryonic mass. It is a challenge to understand how this very fine-tuned coupling between mass and light comes about.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8b91937c0e9159646349a2cc6c7e34914b52abde

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Pavel Kroupa
2. S. McGaugh
3. M. Pawlowski
4. B. Famaey
5. F. Lelli
6. H. Jerjen
7. J. Schombert
8. Joerg Dabringhausen

In Global and Planetary Change

1. Pavel Kroupa
2. B. Famaey
3. F. Lelli
4. J. Schombert
5. M. Pawlowski
6. R. Sanders
7. A. Dutton
8. A. Macciò

Citations in the corpus

• One Law to Rule Them All: The Radial Acceleration Relation of Galaxies (2016, methodology): “While promising, the model of Di Cintio & Lelli (2016) predicts significant intrinsic scatter around the MDAR and correlations between residuals and radius (see their Figure 2).”
• Fitting the radial acceleration relation to individual SPARC galaxies (2018, background): “The definition of mass discrepancy at each radius, Mtot/Mbar ' V2obs/V2bar, makes it possible to study the “local” relation between the rotation curve shape and the baryonic mass distribution, which lead to the mass discrepancy-acceleration relation (McGaugh 2004).”
• Local-Group tests of dark-matter concordance cosmology - Towards a new paradigm for structure formation (2010, background): “In contrast, the DM approach can only poorly reproduce the vast variety of rotation curves, and cannot explain the amazing regularities found in them (McGaugh 2004; McGaugh et al. 2007; Gentile et al. 2009; Milgrom 2009a).”
• Galaxies as simple dynamical systems: observational data disfavor dark matter and stochastic star formation (2014, methodology): “The MDA relation was verified with many more data by McGaugh (2004, [216]).”
• Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND): Observational Phenomenology and Relativistic Extensions (2011, methodology): “Note also that systematics on the stellar mass-to-light ratios can make this relation slightly more blurred than shown here, but the relation is nevertheless always present irrespective of the assumptions on stellar mass-to-light ratios [270].”
• A tensor—vector—scalar framework for modified dynamics and cosmic dark matter (2005, background): “These successes have been well-cataloged (Sanders and McGaugh 2002) and suggest that galaxy phenomenology can be understood without invoking the existence of dark matter (McGaugh 2004a).”
• Cold dark matter haloes in the Planck era: evolution of structural parameters for Einasto and NFW profiles (2014, background): “…matter haloes are of particular interest as they provide a non-linear scale test of the cold dark matter paradigm, cosmological parameters, and more generally for the nature of dark matter itself (e.g., Moore 1994; Flores & Primack 1994; de Blok et al. 2001; Zentner & Bullock 2002; McGaugh 2004).”
• The Baryonic Tully-Fisher Relation of Galaxies with Extended Rotation Curves and the Stellar Mass of Rotating Galaxies (2005, methodology): “Mass-to-light ratios are scaled by several recipes: as a fraction of maximum disk; with respect to stellar population synthesis models; and by the Mass Discrepancy—Acceleration (MDAcc) relation (McGaugh 2004).”
• The Dark Matter Crisis: Falsification of the Current Standard Model of Cosmology (2012, background): “The discrepancy between Newtonian dynamics and the dynamics observed in galaxies is concisely documented as the mass-discrepancy introduced by McGaugh (2004).”