A deep near-infrared search for halo emission from an edge-on spiral galaxy

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Abstract
Deep near-infrared imaging above and below the plane of the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 100 has been used to place the best lower limits to date on the K-band mass-to-light ratio for a dark halo. For objects cooler than 1000 K the minimum value is 160, while a lower limit of ∼ 100 can be set for halo objects of higher temperatures. Hydrogen-burning stars are strongly excluded as the dominant halo constituent, but brown dwarfs are not. A power-law IMF would require a mass dependence steeper than m−3 to be consistent with these limits so that most of the mass would be in the form of brown dwarfs.

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