Mass Models for Low Surface Brightness Galaxies with High Resolution Optical Velocity Fields

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution optical velocity fields to analyze low surface brightness galaxies, finding that isothermal halos better fit the data than NFW profiles and revealing a cusp mass excess inconsistent with CDM predictions.

Contribution

The paper provides high-resolution velocity data and compares halo models, showing isothermal halos fit better and identifying a cusp mass excess challenging CDM models.

Findings

Isothermal halos better fit than NFW in low surface brightness galaxies.

Significant cusp mass excess observed, exceeding CDM predictions.

Reconciliation with LCDM requires noncircular motions or lower power spectrum amplitude.

Abstract

We present high-resolution optical velocity fields from DensePak integral field spectroscopy, along with derived rotation curves, for a sample of low surface brightness galaxies. In the limit of no baryons, we fit the NFW and pseudoisothermal halo models to the data and find the rotation curve shapes and halo central densities to be better described by the isothermal halo. For those galaxies with photometry, we present halo fits for three assumptions of the stellar mass-to-light ratio. We find that the velocity contribution from the baryons is significant enough in the maximum disk case that maximum disk and the NFW halo are mutually exclusive. We find a substantial cusp mass excess at the centers of the galaxies, with at least two times more mass expected in the cuspy CDM halo than is allowed by the data. We also find that to reconcile the data with LCDM, ~20 km/s noncircular motions are needed and/or the power spectrum has a lower amplitude on the scales we probe.