Decoding the Gravitational Geometry and Stellar Photometric Profiles of Galaxy NGC 7331

Abstract

Galaxy rotation curves provide a powerful probe of mass distributions in spiral galaxies. We present a general relativistic analysis of NGC 7331 using its observed rotation curve and WISE W1 (3.4 $\mu$m) photometry to constrain the stellar mass profile. Adopting a static, spherically symmetric spacetime with anisotropic matter (vanishing radial pressure), we fit a modified exponential azimuthal velocity law to kinematic data, reconstructing metric functions and deriving enclosed mass, energy density, and tangential pressure profiles. The stellar mass underpredicts the total gravitating mass at intermediate-to-large radii, indicating dominant dark matter. The physical viability of the resulting relativistic model is examined through energy conditions, causality constraints, and the stability of circular orbits. A comparison with the standard Navarro--Frenk--White dark matter profile has been done. Overall, this study demonstrates that combining rotation-curve data with photometric stellar mass estimates within a general relativistic framework provides a consistent and physically viable description of the mass distribution in spiral galaxies such as NGC~7331.

References in corpus (19)

• A Theory of Dark Matter
• Rotation Curves of Spiral Galaxies
• Morris-Thorne wormholes with a cosmological constant
• Reconstructing the stellar mass distributions of galaxies using S4G IRAC 3.6 and 4.5 micron images: II. The conversion from light to mass
• Possible existence of wormholes in the galactic halo region
• Vortices in Protoplanetary Disks
• The Supermassive Black Hole and Dark Matter Halo of NGC 4649 (M60)
• The shape of the dark matter halo in the early-type galaxy NGC 2974
• Wormhole inspired by non-commutative geometry
• General relativistic resistive magnetohydrodynamics with robust primitive variable recovery for accretion disk simulations
• Combining rotation curves and gravitational lensing: How to measure the equation of state of dark matter in the galactic halo
• Nuclear-to-Outer Rotation Curves of Galaxies in the CO and HI Lines
• Lenticular Galaxies and Their Environments
• MOND rotation curves for spiral galaxies with Cepheid-based distances
• The Dark Matter Distribution in the Spiral $NGC3198$ out to 0.22 $R_{vir}$
• Oxygen and nitrogen abundances of HII regions in six spiral galaxies
• Radio spectral index images of the spiral galaxies NGC 0628, NGC 3627, and NGC 7331
• Planting a Lyman alpha forest on AbacusSummit
• Resolving the MYSO binaries PDS 27 and PDS 37 with VLTI/PIONIER