Boxy Hα emission profiles in star-forming galaxies.

We assemble a sample of disc star-forming galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7, studying the structure of Ha emission lines, finding a large fraction of this sample contains boxy Hα line profiles. This fraction depends on galaxy physical and geometric parameters in the following way: (1) it increases monotonically with star formation rate per unit area (ΣSFR), and stellar mass (M*), with the trend being much stronger with M*, from ~0 per cent atM* = 1010M⊙ to about 50 per cent atM* = 1011M⊙; (2) the fraction is much smaller in face-on systems than in edge-on systems. It increases with galaxy inclination (i) while i < 60° and is roughly a constant of 25 per cent beyond this range; (3) for the sources which can be modelled well with two velocity components, blueshifted and redshifted from the systemic velocity, these is a positive correlation between the velocity difference of these two components and the stellar mass, with a slope similar to the Tully-Fisher relation; (4) the two components are very symmetric in the mean, both in velocity and in amplitude. The four findings listed above can be understood as a natural result of a rotating galaxy disc with a kpc-scale ring-like Ha emission region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]