Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2007-03-20
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
14 pages, 4 figures
Scientific paper
Early-type galaxies (ETGs) are known to possess a number of quite useful scaling relations among their photometric and/or kinematical quantities. We propose a unified picture reducing both the fundamental plane and the photometric plane to suitable projections of a single relation. Modelling the ETG as a two component system, made out of a luminous Sersic profile and a NFW dark halo, and applying the virial theorem, we are able to express the velocity dispersion \sigma_0 as a function of the effective intensity I_e, the effective radius R_e and the Sersic index n. In a log-log plot, this relation reduces to a hyperplane (i.e., a plane in a four dimensional configuration space) which we dubbed the {\it Sersic Virial Hyperplane} (SVH). The tilt of the SVH can be fully explained in terms of a power-law scaling of the stellar (rather than the global) mass-to-light ratio Upsilon with the total luminosity L_T, while the scatter is determined by those on the c-M_{vir} relation between the concentration c and the virial mass M_{vir} of the dark halo component. In order to test whether such the observed SVH is consistent with the theoretical assumptions, we perform a detailed simulation of a large ETGs sample reproducing the same photometric properties of a SDSS low redshift ETGs catalog. It turns out that the simulated SVH is fully consistent with the observed one thus validating our theoretical approach.
Capozziello Salvatore
Cardone Vincenzo Fabrizio
Molinaro R.
Salzano Vincenzo
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