The fundamental manifold of spiral galaxies: ordered versus random motions and the morphology dependence of the Tully–Fisher relation

Abstract

(Abridged) We investigate the morphology dependence of the Tully-Fisher relation, and the expansion of the relation into a three-dimensional manifold defined by luminosity, total circular velocity and a third dynamical parameter, to fully characterise spiral galaxies across all morphological types. We use a semi-analytic hierarchical model of galaxy evolution to build the theoretical TF relation. With this tool, we analyse a unique dataset of galaxies for which we cross-match luminosity with total circular velocity and central velocity dispersion. We provide a theoretical framework to calculate such measurable quantities from semi-analytic models. We establish the morphology dependence of the TF relation in both model and data. We analyse the dynamical properties of the model galaxies and determine that the parameter 'sigma/Vc', i.e. the ratio between random and total motions defined by velocity dispersion and circular velocity, accurately characterises the varying slope of the TF relation for different model galaxy types. We apply these dynamical cuts to the observed galaxies and find that such selection produces a differential slope of the TF relation. The TF slope in different ranges of 'sigma/Vc' is consistent with that for the photometric classification in Sa, Sb, Sc. We conclude that 'sigma/Vc' is a good parameter to classify galaxy type, and we argue that such classification based on dynamics more closely mirrors the physical properties of the observed galaxies, compared to visual classification. We also argue that dynamical classification is useful for samples where eye inspection is not reliable or impractical. We conclude that 'sigma/Vc' is a suitable parameter to characterise the hierarchical assembly history that determines the disk-to-bulge ratio, and to expand the TF relation into a three-dimensional manifold, defined by luminosity, circular velocity and 'sigma/Vc'.