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American Astronomical Society, Astrophysical Journal, 1(645), p. L29-L32, 2006

DOI: 10.1086/505905

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The U-shaped Distribution of Globular Cluster-specific Frequencies in a Biased Globular Cluster Formation Scenario

Journal article published in 2006 by Kenji Bekki ORCID, Hideki Yahagi, Duncan A. Forbes
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

Using high-resolution numerical simulations, we investigate mass- and luminosity-normalized specific frequencies (T_N and S_N, respectively) of globular cluster systems (GCSs) in order to understand the origin of the observed U-shaped relation between S_N and V-band magnitude (M_V) of their host galaxies. We adopt a biased GC formation scenario in which GC formation is truncated in galaxy halos that are virialized at a later redshift, z_trun. T_N is derived for galaxies with GCs today and converted into S_N for reasonable galaxy mass-to-light-ratios (M/L). We find that T_N depends on halo mass (M_h) in the sense that T_N can be larger in more massive halos with M_h > 10^9 M_sun, if z_trun is as high as 15. We however find that the dependence is too weak to explain the observed S_N-M_V relation and the wide range of S_N in low-mass early-type galaxies with -20.5 < M_V < -16.0 mag for a reasonable constant M/L. The M_V-dependence of S_N for the low-mass galaxies can be well reproduced, if the mass-to-light-ratio M_h/L_V ∝ M_h^{α}, where α is as steep as -1. Based on these results, we propose that the origin of the observed U-shaped S_N-M_V relation of GCSs can be understood in terms of the bimodality in the dependence of M_h/L_V on M_h of their host galaxies. We also suggest that the observed large dispersionin S_N in low-mass galaxies is due partly to the large dispersion in T_N. Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures (two color), accepted by ApJL