Paper detail

What are we missing in elliptical galaxies ?

The scaling relation for early type galaxies in the 6dF galaxy survey does not have the velocity dispersion dependence expected from standard stellar population models. As noted in recent work with SDSS, there seems to be an additional dependence of mass to light ratio with velocity dispersion, possibly due to a bottom heavy initial mass function. Here we offer a new understanding of the 6dF galaxy survey 3D gaussian Fundamental Plane in terms of a parameterized Jeans equation, but leave mass dependence of M/L and mass dependence of structure still degenerate with just the present constraints. Hybrid models have been proposed recently. Our new analysis brings into focus promising lines of enquiry which could be pursued to lift this degeneracy, including stellar atmospheres computation, kinematic probes of ellipticals at large radius, and a large sample of one micron spectra.