Extensive Globular Cluster Systems Associated with Ultra Diffuse Galaxies in the Coma Cluster

Abstract

We present Hubble Space Telescope imaging of two ultra diffuse galaxies (UDGs) with measured stellar velocity dispersions in the Coma cluster. The galaxies, Dragonfly 44 and DFX1, have effective radii of 4.7 kpc and 3.5 kpc and velocity dispersions of $47_{-6}^{+8}$ km/s and $30_{-7}^{+7}$ km/s, respectively. Both galaxies are associated with a striking number of compact objects, tentatively identified as globular clusters: $N_{\mathrm{gc}}=74\pm 18$ for Dragonfly 44 and $N_{\mathrm{gc}}=62\pm 17$ for DFX1. The number of globular clusters is far higher than expected from the luminosities of the galaxies but is consistent with expectations from the empirical relation between dynamical mass and globular cluster count defined by other galaxies. Combining our data for these two objects with previous HST observations of Coma UDGs we find that UDGs have a factor of $6.9_{-2.4}^{+1.0}$ more globular clusters than other galaxies of the same luminosity, in contrast to a recent study of a similar sample by Amorisco et al. (2017), but consistent with earlier results for individual galaxies. The Harris et al. (2017) relation between globular cluster count and dark matter halo mass implies a median halo mass of $M_{\mathrm{halo}}\sim 1.5\times 10^{11}{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$ for the sixteen Coma UDGs that have been observed with HST so far, with the largest and brightest having $M_{\mathrm{halo}}\sim 5\times 10^{11}{\mathrm{M}}_{\odot }$.

Accepted for publication in ApJ Letters. The black and white panels of Figure 1 make the central point of the paper, hopefully. Added a table in the revised version, listing the key measurements for all 16 galaxies

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• The Ambiguity in the Definition and Behavior of the Gravitational and Cosmological `Coupling Constants' in the Theory of Induced Gravity