Dust effects on the derived Sersic indexes of disks and bulges in spiral galaxies

We present a theoretical study that quantifies the effect of dust on the derived Sersic indexes of disks and bulges. The changes in the derived parameters from their intrinsic values (as seen in the absence of dust) were obtained by fitting Sersic distributions on simulated images of disks and bulges produced using radiative transfer calculations and the model of Popescu et al. 2011. We found that dust has the effect of lowering the measured Sersic index in most cases, with stronger effects for disks and bulges seen through more optically thick lines of sight.
Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the Proceedings of the IAU Symposium No.284, "The Spectral Energy Distribution of Galaxies", 5-9 sept. 2011, editors Richard J. Tuffs and Cristina C. Popescu