No Arabic abstract
The radial profiles of the Hb, Mg, and Fe line-strength indices are presented for a sample of eight spiral galaxies with a low surface-brightness stellar disc and a bulge. The correlations between the central values of the line-strength indices and velocity dispersion are consistent to those known for early-type galaxies and bulges of high surface-brightness galaxies. The age, metallicity, and alpha/Fe enhancement of the stellar populations in the bulge-dominated region are obtained using stellar population models with variable element abundance ratios. Almost all the sample bulges are characterized by a young stellar population, on-going star formation, and a solar alpha/Fe enhancement. Their metallicity spans from high to sub-solar values. No significant gradient in age and alpha/Fe enhancement is measured, whereas only in a few cases a negative metallicity gradient is found. These properties suggest that a pure dissipative collapse is not able to explain formation of all the sample bulges and that other phenomena, like mergers or acquisition events, need to be invoked. Such a picture is also supported by the lack of a correlation between the central value and gradient of the metallicity in bulges with very low metallicity. The stellar populations of the bulges hosted by low surface-brightness discs share many properties with those of high surface-brightness galaxies. Therefore, they are likely to have common formation scenarios and evolution histories. A strong interplay between bulges and discs is ruled out by the fact that in spite of being hosted by discs with extremely different properties, the bulges of low and high surface-brightness discs are remarkably similar.
(abridged) Photometry and long-slit spectroscopy are presented for a sample of 6 galaxies with a low surface brightness stellar disc and a bulge. The stellar and ionised-gas kinematics were measured along the major and minor axis in half of the sample galaxies, whereas the other half was observed only along two diagonal axes. Spectra along two diagonal axes were obtained also for one of the objects with major and minor axis spectra. The kinematic measurements extend in the disc region out to a surface-brightness level mu_R~24mag/arcsec^2 reaching in all cases the flat part of the rotation curve. The stellar kinematics turns out to be more regular and symmetric than the ionised-gas kinematics, which often shows the presence of non-circular, off-plane, and non-ordered motions. This raises the question about the reliability of the use of the ionised gas as the tracer of the circular velocity in the modeling of the mass distribution, in particular in the central regions of low surface brightness galaxies.
We study the spectroscopic properties of a large sample of Low Surface Brightness galaxies (LSBGs) (with B-band central surface brightness mu0(B)>22 mag arcsec^(-2)) selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 4 (SDSS-DR4) main galaxy sample. A large sample of disk-dominated High Surface Brightness galaxies (HSBGs, with mu0(B)<22 mag arcsec^(-2)) are also selected for comparison simultaneously. To study them in more details, these sample galaxies are further divided into four subgroups according to mu0(B) (in units of mag arcsec^(-2)): vLSBGs (24.5-22.75),iLSBGs (22.75-22.0), iHSBGs (22.0-21.25), and vHSBGs (<21.25). The diagnostic diagram from spectral emission-line ratios shows that the AGN fractions of all the four subgroups are small (<9%). The 21,032 star-forming galaxies with good quality spectroscopic observations are further selected for studying their dust extinction, strong-line ratios, metallicities and stellar mass-metallicities relations. The vLSBGs have lower extinction values and have less metal-rich and massive galaxies than the other subgroups. The oxygen abundances of our LSBGs are not as low as those of the HII regions in LSBGs studied in literature, which could be because our samples are more luminous, and because of the different metallicity calibrations used. We find a correlation between 12+log(O/H) and mu0(B) for vLSBGs, iLSBGs and iHSBGs but show that this could be a result of correlation between mu0(B) and stellar mass and the well-known mass-metallicity relation. This large sample shows that LSBGs span a wide range in metallicity and stellar mass, and they lie nearly on the stellar mass vs. metallicity and N/O vs. O/H relations of normal galaxies. This suggests that LSBGs and HSBGs have not had dramatically different star formation and chemical enrichment histories.
Near-infrared (NIR) K images of a sample of five low surface brightness disc galaxies (LSBGs) were combined with optical data, with the aim of constraining their star formation histories. Both red and blue LSBGs were imaged to enable comparison of their stellar populations. For both types of galaxy strong colour gradients were found, consistent with mean stellar age gradients. Very low stellar metallicities were ruled out on the basis of metallicity-sensitive optical-NIR colours. These five galaxies suggest that red and blue LSBGs have very different star formation histories and represent two independent routes to low B band surface brightness. Blue LSBGs are well described by models with low, roughly constant star formation rates, whereas red LSBGs are better described by a `faded disc scenario.
Based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR 7, we investigate the environment, morphology and stellar population of bulgeless low surface brightness (LSB) galaxies in a volume-limited sample with redshift ranging from 0.024 to 0.04 and $M_r$ $leq$ $-18.8$. The local density parameter $Sigma_5$ is used to trace their environments. We find that, for bulgeless galaxies, the surface brightness does not depend on the environment. The stellar populations are compared for bulgeless LSB galaxies in different environments and for bulgeless LSB galaxies with different morphologies. The stellar populations of LSB galaxies in low density regions are similar to those of LSB galaxies in high density regions. Irregular LSB galaxies have more young stars and are more metal-poor than regular LSB galaxies. These results suggest that the evolution of LSB galaxies may be driven by their dynamics including mergers rather than by their large scale environment.
Using optical/near-IR broadband photometry together with Halpha emission line data, we attempt to constrain the star formation histories, ages, total stellar masses and stellar mass-to-light ratios for a sample of extremely blue low surface brightness galaxies. We find that, under standard assumptions about the stellar initial mass function, the Halpha equivalent widths of these objects appear inconsistent with recently suggested scenarios including constant or increasing star formation rates over cosmological time scales. In a critical assessment of the prospects of obtaining ages from integrated broadband photometry, we conclude that even with near-IR data, the ages are poorly constrained and that current observations cannot rule out the possibility that these objects formed as recently as 1-2 Gyr ago. Methods which could potentially improve the age estimates are discussed. The stellar masses of these galaxies are inferred to lie below 10^10 solar masses. This, in combination with low ages, could constitute a problem for current hierarchical models of galaxy formation, which predict objects of this mass to form predominantly early in the history of the universe. The possibility to use the ages of the bluest low surface brightness galaxies as a test of such models is demonstrated.