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Paper: Do Massive Spiral Arms Cause Velocity Wiggles?
Volume: 197, XVth IAP Meeting Dynamics of Galaxies: From the Early Universe to the Present
Page: 135
Authors: Kranz, Thilo; Rix, Hans-Walter
Abstract: The empirical hypothesis that stellar disks contain a dominant mass fraction compared to the amount of dark matter within the galaxy's half light radius, has proven to be quite successful. However, the 'maximal disk hypothesis' disagrees with cosmological expectations (e.g. Navarro, 1998) as well as with some observational findings (e.g. Kuijken and Gilmore, 1991; Courteau and Rix 1999). Many of these results predict that dark matter is of comparable importance to the stellar mass even in the inner parts of galaxies. Observational verification for any of these scenarios can be obtained from comparing non-axisymmetric velocity perturbations - predicted by near-IR (K') photometry - to observed gas velocity fields for a sample of nearby late type spiral galaxies.
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