1. Mapping the dark matter halo of early-type galaxy NGC 2974 through orbit-based models with combined stellar and cold gas kinematics
- Author
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Anne-Marie Weijmans, Meng Yang, Raffaella Morganti, Tom Oosterloo, Nicholas Fraser Boardman, Glenn van de Ven, Ling Zhu, Astronomy, University of St Andrews. School of Physics and Astronomy, and University of St Andrews. Centre for Contemporary Art
- Subjects
DYNAMICS ,Stellar kinematics ,haloes [Galaxies] ,structure [Galaxies] ,Dark matter ,FOS: Physical sciences ,Astrophysics::Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics ,Kinematics ,Astrophysics ,MASS ,01 natural sciences ,dark matter ,Gravitational potential ,0103 physical sciences ,LARGE-SCALE STRUCTURE ,TO-LIGHT RATIO ,QB Astronomy ,Astrophysics::Solar and Stellar Astrophysics ,010303 astronomy & astrophysics ,Astrophysics::Galaxy Astrophysics ,galaxies: kinematics and dynamics ,QB ,Physics ,ELLIPTIC GALAXY ,kinematics and dynamics [Galaxies] ,010308 nuclear & particles physics ,DAS ,Astronomy and Astrophysics ,ATLAS(3D) PROJECT ,Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies ,SAURON PROJECT ,Galaxy ,Dark matter halo ,galaxies: haloes ,Orbit ,Space and Planetary Science ,Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) ,MULTI-GAUSSIAN EXPANSION ,galaxies: structure ,Astrophysics::Earth and Planetary Astrophysics ,Schwarzschild radius ,NGC-2974 ,SYSTEM - Abstract
We present an orbit-based method of combining stellar and cold gas kinematics to constrain the dark matter profile of early-type galaxies. We apply this method to early-type galaxy NGC 2974, using Pan-STARRS imaging and SAURON stellar kinematics to model the stellar orbits, and introducing HI kinematics from VLA observation as a tracer of the gravitational potential. The introduction of the cold gas kinematics shows a significant effect on the confidence limits of especially the dark halo properties: we exclude more than $95\%$ of models within the $1-\sigma$ confidence level of Schwarzschild modelling with only stellar kinematics, and reduce the relative uncertainty of the dark matter fraction significantly to $10\%$ within $5 R_\mathrm{e}$. Adopting a generalized-NFW dark matter profile, we measure a shallow cuspy inner slope of $0.6^{+0.2}_{-0.3}$ when including the cold gas kinematics in our model. We cannot constrain the inner slope with the stellar kinematics alone., Comment: 13 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS
- Published
- 2020