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The baryonic haloes of elliptical galaxies: radial distribution of globular clusters and diffuse hot gas

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Abstract

  • For a sample of nine well-studied giant ellipticals, we compare the projected radial distribution of their red and blue globular cluster (GC) subpopulations with their host galaxy stellar and X-ray surface brightness profiles. We support previous findings that the surface density distribution of red (metal-rich) GCs follows that of the host galaxy starlight. We find good agreement between the outer slope of the blue GC surface density and that of the galaxy X-ray emission. This coincidence of projected radial profiles is likely due to the fact that both blue GCs and X-ray emitting hot gas share the same gravitational potential in equilibrium. When deprojected the X-ray emitting hot gas has a radial density dependence that is the square root of that for the

Publication Date

  • 2012

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