On the baryonic contents of low-mass galaxies

Abstract

The baryonic Tully-Fisher relation is an important observational constraint on cosmological and galactic models. However, it is critical to keep in mind that in observations only stars and molecular and atomic gas are counted, while the contribution of the ionized gas is almost universally missed. The ionized gas is, however, expected to be present in the gaseous disks of dwarf galaxies simply because they are exposed to the cosmic ionizing background and to the stellar radiation that manages to escape from the central regions of the galactic disks into their outer layers. Such an expectation is, indeed, born out both by cosmological numerical simulations and by simple analytical models. © 2012. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved..