A closer look at the extended edge-on low-surface brightness galaxies

TL;DR

This study provides detailed spectroscopic and structural analysis of four extended edge-on low-surface brightness galaxies, revealing their stellar populations, metallicity gradients, and dynamical properties, supporting a merger-driven formation scenario.

Contribution

It offers the first spectroscopic measurements of stellar populations in edge-on giant LSB galaxies and links their properties to merger-driven formation processes.

Findings

Shallow to flat gas metallicity gradients in LSB disks

Evidence of dynamical overheating in stellar velocity dispersions

Structural parameters consistent with merger formation scenarios

Abstract

To understand the origin of extended disks of low-surface brightness (LSB) galaxies, we studied in detail 4 such systems with large disks seen edge-on. Two of them are edge-on giant LSB galaxies (gLSBGs) recently identified by our team. The edge-on orientation of these systems boosts their surface brightnesses that provided an opportunity to characterize stellar populations spectroscopically and yielded the first such measurements for edge-on gLSBGs. We collected deep images of one galaxy using the 1.4-m Milankovi\'c Telescope which we combined with the archival Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam and DESI Legacy Surveys data available for the three other systems, and measured the structural parameters of the disks. We acquired deep long-slit spectra with the Russian 6-meter telescope and the 10-m Keck II telescope and estimated stellar population properties in the high- and low-surface brightness regions as well as the gas-phase metallicity distribution. The gas metallicity gradients are shallow to flat in the range between 0 and -0.03 dex per exponential disk scale length, which is consistent with the extrapolation of the gradient -- scale length relation for smaller disk galaxies. Our estimates of stellar velocity dispersion in the LSB disks as well as the relative thickness of the disks indicate the dynamical overheating. Our observations favor mergers as the essential stage in the formation scenario for massive LSB galaxies.