On the Fundamental Plane of the Galactic Globular Cluster System

Abstract

The globular clusters (GC) of our Galaxy have been found to lie close to a plane in the log(R_e), log(sigma), SB_e space, on the continuation of the Fundamental Plane (FP) known to characterize the properties of early-type galaxies. We reexamine the issue on a sample of 48 GCs selected in terms of homogeneity criteria for the photometric data available from the literature and perform a model-independent analysis of surface brightness profiles (SBP) and distance moduli, estimating error bars and studying selection effects with non-parametric statistical tests. We determine the coefficients of the FP and their error bars. The scatter from the FP relation is likely to be intrinsic, i.e. not due to measurement errors only. We find that in the standard FP coordinates our sample occupies a slim, axisymmetric region of parameter space, suggesting that the scaling relation might be around a Fundamental Line, rather than a plane, confirming a result noted earlier. This is likely to be the origin of the difficulties in the fit by a plane mentioned in previous investigations. Such FL relation would imply a pure photometric scaling law, which might be tested on wider samples and on extra-galactic GC systems. We find a correlation of the residuals from the FP relation with the central slope of the SBP. No other correlations are found. Finally, we reconstruct the distribution of the values of the quantity log(K_V/(M/L)) (virial coefficient divided by the mass-to-light ratio) through kernel density estimation and find evidence for bimodality, which suggests that the galactic GC system may be composed of at least two dynamically different populations. Yet, these populations do not reflect the standard dichotomy between disk and halo clusters. (abridged).