Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Mass-To-Light Ratio Gradients In Early-Type Galaxy Haloes, N. R. Napolitano, M. Capaccioli, Aaron J. Romanowsky, N. G. Douglas, M. R. Merrifield, K. Kuijken, M. Arnaboldi, O. Gerhard, K. C. Freeman

Aaron J. Romanowsky

Owing to the fact that the near future should see a rapidly expanding set of probes of the halo masses of individual early-type galaxies, we introduce a convenient parameter for characterizing the halo masses from both observational and theoretical results: ∇ℓϒ, the logarithmic radial gradient of the mass-to-light ratio. Using halo density profiles from Λ-cold dark matter (CDM) simulations, we derive predictions for this gradient for various galaxy luminosities and star formation efficiencies εSF. As a pilot study, we assemble the available ∇ℓϒ data from kinematics in early-type galaxies – representing the first unbiased study of halo masses in a …