Stellar systems following the $R^{1/m}$ luminosity law. IV. The total energy and the central concentration of galaxies

Abstract

We expand our previous analytical and numerical studies of the family of Sérsic models, routinely used to describe early-type galaxies and the bulges of spiral galaxies. In particular, we focus on the total energy budget, an important dynamical property that has not been discussed in detail in previous works. We use two different methods to calculate the total energy for the Sérsic model family, resulting in two independent expressions that can be used along the entire sequence of Sérsic models. We use these expressions to investigate whether the Spitzer concentration index is a reliable measure for the intrinsic 3D concentration of galaxies, and we conclude that it is not a very useful measure for the central concentration. The popular Third Galaxy Concentration index, on the other hand, is shown to be a reliable measure for the intrinsic 3D concentration, even though it is based on the surface brightness distribution and not on the intrinsic 3D density.

9 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in A&A

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• The Nuker model for galactic nuclei
• SpheCow: flexible dynamical models for galaxies and dark matter haloes
• Self-consistent dynamical models with a finite extent -- II. Radially truncated models
• An accurate and simple, asymptotically matched deprojection of the Sersic law
• Self-consistent dynamical models with a finite extent -- I. The uniform density sphere