Structural properties of faint low surface brightness galaxies

TL;DR

This study analyzes the structural features of 263 faint low surface brightness galaxies, revealing most are bulgeless, predominantly blue, and some host stellar bars, providing insights into their formation and evolution.

Contribution

It offers a detailed 2D decomposition of LSB galaxies across multiple bands, highlighting the prevalence of bulgeless structures and bar features, which is novel in the context of faint LSB galaxy analysis.

Findings

60% of galaxies are bulgeless exponential disks

20% of galaxies with significant bulge component

15% of galaxies host stellar bars

Abstract

We study the structural properties of Low Surface Brightness galaxies (LSB) using a sample of 263 galaxies observed by the Green Bank Telescope (Schneider et al 1992). We perform 2D decompositions of these galaxies in the SDSS $g$, $r$ and $i$ bands using the GALFIT software. Our decomposition reveals that about $60\%$ of these galaxies are bulgeless i.e., their light distributions are well modelled by pure exponential disks. The rest of the galaxies were fitted with two components: a Sersic bulge and an exponential disk. Most of these galaxies have bulge-to-total (B/T) ratio less than 0.1. However, of these 104 galaxies, $20\%$ have $B/T > 0.1$ i.e., hosting significant bulge component and they are more prominent amongst the fainter LSBs. According to $g - r$ colour criteria, most of the LSB galaxies in our sample are blue, with only 7 classified as red LSBs. About $15\%$ of the LSB galaxies (including both blue and red) in our sample host stellar bars. The incidence of bars is more prominent in relatively massive blue LSB galaxies with very high gas fraction. These findings may provide important clues to the formation and evolution of LSB galaxies - in particular on the bar/bulge formation in faint LSB disks.