The SWELLS survey - V. A Salpeter stellar initial mass function in the bulges of massive spiral galaxies

TL;DR

This study uses lensing and kinematics to show that bulges in massive spiral galaxies have a Salpeter-like IMF, while disks align with Milky Way-like IMFs, indicating IMF variation within galaxies.

Contribution

It provides the first direct evidence of IMF variation between bulge and disk components in individual spiral galaxies using combined lensing and kinematic data.

Findings

Bulge stellar masses favor a Salpeter IMF normalization.

Disk masses are consistent with Milky Way-like IMFs.

Galaxies are baryon dominated at 2.2 disk scale lengths.

Abstract

Recent work has suggested that the stellar initial mass function (IMF) is not universal, but rather is correlated with galaxy stellar mass, stellar velocity dispersion, or morphological type. In this paper, we investigate variations of the IMF within individual galaxies. For this purpose, we use strong lensing and gas kinematics to measure independently the normalisation of the IMF of the bulge and disk components of a sample of 5 massive spiral galaxies with substantial bulge components taken from the SWELLS survey. We find that the stellar mass of the bulges are tightly constrained by the lensing and kinematic data. A comparison with masses based on stellar population synthesis models fitted to optical and near infrared photometry favors a Salpeter-like normalisation of the IMF. Conversely, the disk masses are less well constrained due to degeneracies with the dark matter halo, but are consistent with Milky Way type IMFs in agreement with previous studies. The disks are submaximal at 2.2 disk scale lengths, but due to the contribution of the bulges, the galaxies are baryon dominated at 2.2 disk scale lengths. Globally, our inferred IMF normalisation is consistent with that found for early-type galaxies of comparable stellar mass (> 10^11 M_sun). Our results suggest a non-universal IMF within the different components of spiral galaxies, adding to the well-known differences in stellar populations between disks and bulges.