Fundamental plane: dark matter and dissipation contributions

¹ Departamento de Ciências Exatas e Tecnológicas, Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, 45650-000 Ilhéus, Brazil e-mail: albr@uesc.br
² Divisão de Materiais, Instituto de Aeronáutica e Espaço, Departamento de Ciência e Tecnologia Aeroespacial, Pça. Mal. Eduardo Gomes, 50, Vila das Acácias, 12228-904 São José dos Campos, Brazil e-mail: ccdantas@iae.cta.br

Received: 31 December 2009
Accepted: 19 April 2010

Abstract

Context. Stellar and galactic systems are objects in dynamical equilibrium that are composed of ordinary baryonic matter hypothetically embedded in extended dominant dark matter halos.

Aims. Our aim is to investigate the scaling relations and dissipational features of these objects over a wide range of their properties, taking the dynamical influence of the dark matter component into account.

Methods. We study the physical properties of these self-gravitating systems using the two-component virial theorem in conjunction with data that embrace a wide range of astrophysical systems.

Results. We find that the scaling relations defined by the properties of these objects admit a dark-to-luminous density ratio parameter as a natural requirement in this framework. We also probe dissipational effects on the fundamental surface defined by the two-component virial theorem and discuss their relations with respect to the region devoid of objects in the data distribution.

Conclusions. Our results indicate complementary contributions of dissipation and dark matter to the origin of scaling relations in astrophysical systems.