Near-Infrared Fundamental Plane of Elliptical Galaxies

B. Mobasher, R. Guzman, A. Aragon-Salamanca, S. Zepf

Published 1997-03-13, updated 1998-11-16Version 2

Near-infrared (2.2 $\mu m$) observations of a sample of 48 elliptical galaxies in the Coma cluster have been carried out and used to study the near-ir fundamental plane (FP) of ellipticals in this cluster. An rms scatter of 0.072 dex was found for this relation, similar to that of its optical counterpart, using the same sample of galaxies. This corresponds to an uncertainty of 18% in distances to individual galaxies derived from this relation. The sensitivity of the near-infrared FP to the star formation or changes in metallicity and stellar population among the ellipticals was explored and found to be small. Although, a likely source of scatter in this relation is contributions from the Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) population to their near-infrared light. Allowing for observational uncertainties, we find an intrinsic scatter of 0.060 dex in the near-ir FP. The cluster galaxies presented here, provide the zero-point for the peculiar velocity studies, using the near-infrared FP. Changes in the slopes of the $D-\sigma$ and $L-\sigma$ relations of ellipticals between the optical and near-infrared wavelengths were investigated and found to be due to variations in metallicity or age (or a combination of them). However, it was not possible to disentangle the effects of age and metallicity in these relations. Using evolutionary population synthesis models, we find that the effects of age and metallicity decouple on the $(M/L)_K$ vs. Mg$_2$ and $(M/L)_K$ vs. (V$-$K) diagrams.