The color gradients of spiral disks in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
  We investigate the radial color gradients of galactic disks using a sample of
about 20,000 face-on spiral galaxies selected from the fourth data release of
the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-DR4). We combine galaxies with similar
concentration, size and luminosity to construct composite galaxies, and then
measure their color profiles by stacking the azimuthally averaged radial color
profiles of all the member galaxies. Except for the smallest galaxies (R_{50}<3
kpc), almost all galaxies show negative disk color gradients with mean g-r
gradient G_{gr}=-0.006 mag kpc^{-1} and r-z gradient G_{rz}=-0.018 mag
kpc^{-1}. The disk color gradients are independent of the morphological types
of galaxies and strongly dependent on the disk surface brightness \mu_{d}, with
lower surface brightness galactic disks having steeper color gradients. We
quantify the intrinsic correlation between color gradients and surface
brightness as G_{gr}=-0.011\mu_{d}+0.233 and G_{rz}=-0.015\mu_{d}+0.324. These
quantified correlations provide tight observational constraints on the
formation and evolution models of spiral galaxies.
