Paper detail

Suppression of gravitational instabilities by dominant dark matter halo in low surface brightness galaxies

The low surface brightness galaxies are gas-rich and yet have a low star formation rate, this is a well-known puzzle. The spiral features in these galaxies are weak and difficult to trace, although this aspect has not been studied much. These galaxies are known to be dominated by the dark matter halo from the innermost regions. Here we do a stability analysis for the galactic disc of UGC 7321, a low surface brightness, superthin galaxy, for which the various observational input parameters are available. We show that the disc is stable against local, linear axisymmetric and non-axisymmetric perturbations. The Toomre Q parameter values are found to be large (>> 1) mainly due to the low disc surface density and the high rotation velocity resulting due to the dominant dark matter halo, which could explain the observed low star formation rate. For the stars-alone case, the disc shows finite swing amplification but the addition of dark matter halo suppresses that amplification almost completely. Even the inclusion of the low-dispersion gas which constitutes a high disc mass fraction does not help in causing swing amplification. This can explain why these galaxies do not show strong spiral features. Thus the dynamical effect of a halo that is dominant from inner regions can naturally explain why star formation and spiral features are largely suppressed in low surface brightness galaxies, making these different from the high surface brightness galaxies.