FDG RESULTS FOR NGC 3198

NGC 3198 is a barred spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major, located in the Leo Spur, which is part of the Virgo Supercluster and approximately 47 million light-years away. This galaxy does not possess a central bulge, but only a dominant stellar disk component, together with a relatively less strong gas component. NFDG results for NGC 3198 are described in the figure below: the top panel shows the variable dimension D(R) (red-solid curve) computed with the main NFDG model, and the new mass-dimension function D_m(R) (blue-dashed curve), computed with the NFDG field equation. Both dimensions are very close to values in the range D=1.9-2.1, over most of the radial range. This is typical NFDG behavior for galactic structures dominated by an axially-symmetric stellar disk component. Bottom panel: NFDG galactic rotation curves compared with SPARC data. There is perfect agreement between the main NFDG D(R) curve (red-solid) and the experimental data. This shows that, if this galaxy behaves as a fractal structure whose dimension D follows the red-solid curve in the top panel, then the resulting NFDG circular velocity curve in the bottom panel (red-solid) will perfectly fit the experimental data, without any need of dark matter. The NFDG D_m(R) curve (blue-dashed) is less effective in fitting the experimental data, but is still a reasonably good fit.

A disk-dominated galaxy, such as NGC 3198, is characterized by a fractional dimension which is very close to D=2. This is due to the axially-symmetric, flattened-disk shape of this galaxy (see also similar galaxies NGC 2841 and NGC 6503). The gas component is less important for this galaxy. See my seventh paper for a full discussion of this galaxy.