Families of dynamically hot stellar systems over ten orders of magnitude in mass

TL;DR

This study comprehensively analyzes hot stellar systems across ten orders of magnitude in mass, revealing two main families with distinct size-mass relations and a common size boundary, enhancing understanding of their scaling laws and distances.

Contribution

It provides a complete overview of hot stellar systems from faint dwarf galaxies to giant ellipticals, identifying two families and their size-mass relations, including high-redshift galaxy behavior.

Findings

Two families of hot stellar systems: 'galaxian' and 'star cluster'

Massive ellipticals share size-mass relation with cEs, UCDs, and NCs

Surface density limit of a9_eff = 3.17*10^{10}*M^{-3/5} M_sun pc^{-2}

Abstract

Dynamically hot stellar systems, whether star clusters or early-type galaxies, follow well-defined scaling relations over many orders of magnitudes in mass. These fundamental plane relations have been subject of several studies, which have been mostly confined to certain types of galaxies and/or star clusters so far. Here, we present a complete picture of hot stellar systems ranging from faint galaxies and star clusters of only a few hundred solar masses up to giant ellipticals (gEs) with 10^12 M_sun, in particular including large samples of compact ellipticals (cEs), ultra-compact dwarf galaxies (UCDs), dwarf ellipticals (dEs) of nearby galaxy clusters and Local Group ultra-faint dwarf spheroidals (dSphs). For all those stellar systems we show the effective radius-luminosity, effective radius-stellar mass, and effective mass surface density-stellar mass plane. Two families of hot stellar systems can be differentiated: the 'galaxian' family, ranging from gEs over Es and dEs to dSphs, and the 'star cluster' family, comprising globular clusters (GCs), UCDs and nuclear star clusters (NCs). Interestingly, massive ellipticals have a similar size-mass relation as cEs, UCDs and NCs, with a clear common boundary towards minimum sizes. No object of either family is located in the 'zone of avoidance' beyond this limit. Even the majority of early-type galaxies at high redshift obeys this relation. The sizes of dEs and dSphs as well as GCs barely vary with mass over several orders of magnitude. We use the constant galaxy sizes to derive the distances of several local galaxy clusters. Both, galaxies and star clusters, do not exceed a surface density of \Sigma_eff = 3.17*10^{10}*M^{-3/5} M_sun pc^{-2}, causing an orthogonal kink in the galaxy sequence for ellipticals more massive than 10^{11} M_sun. The densest stellar systems (within their effective radius) are nuclear star clusters. (abridged)