Asymptotic kinematics of Globular Clusters: the emergence of a Tully-Fisher relation

Abstract

Using a recent homogeneous sample of 40 high quality velocity dispersion profiles for Galactic globular clusters, we study the low gravitational acceleration regime relevant to the outskirts of these systems. We find that a simple empirical profile having a central Gaussian component and a constant large radius asymptote, ${\sigma }_{\infty }$, accurately describes the variety of observed velocity dispersion profiles. We use published population synthesis models, carefully tailored to each individual cluster, to estimate mass to light ratios from which total stellar masses, $M$, are inferred. We obtain a clear scaling, reminiscent of the galactic Tully-Fisher relation of ${\sigma }_{\infty }(km{s}^{-1})=0.084_{-0.040}^{+0.075}(M/M_{\odot }{)}^{0.3\pm 0.051}$, which is interesting to compare to the deep MOND limit of ${\sigma }_{\infty }(km{s}^{-1})=0.2(M/M_{\odot }{)}^{0.25}$. Under a Newtonian interpretation, our results constitute a further restriction on models where initial conditions are crafted to yield the outer flattening observed today. Within a modified gravity scheme, as the globular clusters studied are not isolated objects in the deep MOND regime, the results obtained point towards a modified gravity where the external field effect of MOND does not appear, or is much suppressed.

9 pages, 8 figures, 1 table. Revised version accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (8)

• The Hubble Space Telescope UV Legacy Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters. I. Overview of the Project and Detection of Multiple Stellar Populations
• The Hubble Space Telescope UV Legacy Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters. IX. The Atlas of Multiple Stellar Populations
• One Law To Rule Them All: The Radial Acceleration Relation of Galaxies
• The Tidal Tails of 47 Tucanae
• Using globular clusters to test gravity in the weak acceleration regime: NGC 7099
• Searching in the dark: the dark mass content of the Milky Way globular clusters NGC288 and NGC6218
• MONDian dynamical modeling of NGC 288 with $\beta \ne 0$
• Multiple Stellar Populations in NGC 2808: a Case Study for Cluster Analysis

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Internal kinematics of GAIA DR3 wide binaries: anomalous behaviour in the low acceleration regime
• The underlying radial acceleration relation
• The dynamics of three nearby E0 galaxies in refracted gravity
• Virial theorem in clusters of galaxies with MOND
• Peculiar dark matter halos inferred from gravitational lensing as a manifestation of modified gravity
• The galactic acceleration scale is imprinted on globular cluster systems of early-type galaxies of most masses and on red and blue globular cluster subpopulations
• On the Orbital Velocity of Isolated Galaxy Pairs: a test of gravity in the low acceleration regime