Baryonic distributions in galaxy dark matter halos
Abstract
In our best current understanding of the growth of structure in the Universe, visibly complex distributions of gas and stars form and evolve into a wide range of galaxies inside overdensities of dark matter. Re-creating the observed diversity in the organization of baryonic mass within dark matter halos represents a key challenge for galaxy formation models. In this dissertation, I constrain the distribution of baryonic and non-baryonic matter in a statistically representative sample of 44 nearby galaxies defined from the Extended Disk Galaxy Exploration Science (EDGES) survey to address the growth of galaxy disks in dark matter halos. I trace the gravitational potentials of each galaxy using rotation curves derived from new and archival radio synthesis observations of neutral hydrogen (HI). The measured rotation curves are decomposed into baryonic and dark matter halo components using 3.6 mum images for the stellar content, the HI observations for the atomic gas component, and, when available, CO data from the literature for the molecular gas component. The HI kinematics are supplemented with optical integral field spectroscopic (IFS) observations to measure the central ionized gas kinematics in 26 galaxies. Distributions of baryonic-to-total mass ratios are determined from the rotation curve decompositions under different assumptions about the contribution of the stellar component, and are compared to global and radial properties of the dominant stellar populations extracted from optical and near-infrared photometry. Galaxies are grouped into clusters of similar baryonic-to-total mass distributions to examine whether they also exhibit similar star and gas properties. The radial distribution of baryonic-to-total mass in a galaxy does not appear to correlate with any characteristics of its star formation history. This result encapsulates the challenge facing simulations to create galaxies which evolve with different star formation histories but similar distributions of mass.
- Publication:
-
Ph.D. Thesis
- Pub Date:
- 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016PhDT.......128R
- Keywords:
-
- Astronomy