The volume density of giant low surface brightness galaxies

Abstract

Rare giant low surface brightness galaxies (gLSBGs) act as a stress test for the current galaxy formation paradigm. To answer the question `How rare are they?' we estimate their volume density in the local Universe. A visual inspection of 120~sq.~deg. covered by deep Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam data was performed independently by four team members. We detected 42 giant disky systems (30 of them isolated) at $z\le 0.1$ with either $g$-band 27.7~mag~arcsec${}^{-2}$ isophotal radius or four disc scalelengths $4h\ge 50$~kpc, 37 of which (including 25 isolated) had low central surface brightness ($\hat{I}{¼}_{0,g}\ge 22.7$ mag~arcsec${}^{-2}$). This corresponds to volume densities of 4.70$\times 10^{-5}$ Mpc${}^{-3}$ for all galaxies with giant extended discs and 4.04$\times 10^{-5}$ Mpc${}^{-3}$ for gLSBGs, which converts to $\sim$12,700 such galaxies in the entire sky out to $z<0.1$. These estimates agree well with the result of the EAGLE cosmological hydrodynamical simulation. Giant disky galaxies represent the large-size end of the volume density distribution of normal-sized spirals, suggesting the non-exceptional nature of giant discs. We observe a high active galactic nucleus fraction among the newly found gLSBGs.

5 pages, 2 tables, 5 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS Letters