The Baryonic Tully-Fisher Relation. II. Stellar Mass Models

Authors

Francis Duey, Case Western Reserve UniversityFollow
Stacy McGaugh, Case Western Reserve UniversityFollow

Author ORCID Identifier

Stacy S. McGaugh

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-3-2025

Abstract

We present new color-ϒ* (mass-to-light ratio) models to convert Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer W1 fluxes into stellar masses. We outline a range of possible star formation histories and chemical evolution scenarios to explore the confidence limits of stellar population models on the value of ϒ*. We conclude that the greatest uncertainties (around 0.1 dex in ϒ*) occur for the bluest galaxies with the strongest variation in recent star formation. For high-mass galaxies, the greatest uncertainty arises from the proper treatment of bulge-disk separation in which to apply different ϒ* relations appropriate for those differing underlying stellar populations. We compare our deduced stellar masses with those deduced from Spitzer Space Telescope 3.6 μm fluxes and stellar mass estimates in the literature using optical photometry and different ϒ* modeling. We find the correspondence to be excellent, arguing that rest-frame near-IR photometry is still more advantageous than other wavelengths.

Publication Title

Astronomical Journal

Grant

NNX11AF89G

Rights

© 2025. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. This is an Open Access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

Francis Duey et al. The Baryonic Tully-Fisher Relation. II. Stellar Mass Models. 2025 AJ 169 186