The mass distribution in Spiral galaxies

Abstract

In the past years a wealth of observations has allowed us to unravel the structural properties of the Dark and Luminous mass distribution in spirals. As result, it has been found that their rotation curves follow, out their virial radius, an Universal function (URC) made by two terms: one due to the gravitational potential of a Freeman stellar disk and the other due to that of a dark halo. The importance of the latter is found to decrease with galaxy mass. Individual objects reveal in detail that dark halos have a density core, whose size correlates with its central value. These properties will guide $\Lambda$CDM Cosmology to evolve to match the challenge that observations presently pose.

10 pages, Invited review for IAU Symposium 244, Dark Galaxies & Lost Baryons. Typos corrected. Comments are welcome

References in corpus (4)

• The Universal Rotation Curve of Spiral Galaxies. II The Dark Matter Distribution out to the Virial Radius
• NGC 3741: dark halo profile from the most extended rotation curve
• The mass distribution in early-type disk galaxies: declining rotation curves and correlations with optical properties
• The Radial Tully-Fisher relation for spiral galaxies I