Take the retained disc mass to be the cosmic baryon fraction of the total dark-matter halo mass: , where . Adopt and describe the disc gravity by . The structure coefficient must be stated: the scale-free Mestel disc gives when its flat rotation speed and enclosed mass are used, while a finite disc requires boundary and thickness information. The equality of edge specific angular momentum gives , with . Combining these relations gives the angular-momentum-conserving self-gravitating disc radius:
With the commonly intended approximation,
The corresponding masses are and , where is the solar mass.
For a definite formation estimate, assume the dark-matter halo acquired this mass and radius at virial equilibrium, retained them afterward, and had mean density with . This uses the matter-dominated spherical-collapse model as an approximation to the specified matter-plus-vacuum cosmology. Since ,
The approximate distance therefore gives formation modestly before observation. Using the numerical rather than approximate distance integral gives , within the accuracy of these structural assumptions. The calculation also assumes inclination-corrected spectroscopy, negligible disc pressure support, conserved edge specific angular momentum, no substantial later accretion or mergers, and no significant baryon loss.
This formation redshift is model-dependent, not uniquely fixed by the stated disc data. Keeping explicit gives . In particular, replacing the mean-density convention by times the critical density gives and , later than the observation. That inconsistent chronological result cannot be silently used as the formation epoch.
There is a further idealization in applying exactly at the edge: an abruptly truncated razor-thin disc with nonzero edge surface density of a disk has a logarithmically divergent in-plane force at that edge. Locally the available mass occupies a half-plane, and its radial contribution is proportional to , with no opposite exterior half-plane to cancel it. Finite thickness or a smooth taper removes that sharp-edge force singularity of a thin disk. Thus is an explicitly qualified Mestel disc or monopole-scale approximation, not an exact finite-disc calculation; enclosed mass does not determine a disc rotation curve.