分类： 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
Guang-Wei Li
Chao Wu
Gui-Ping Zhou
Chen Yang
Hua-Li Li
Jie Chen
Li-Ping Xin
Jing Wang
Hasitieer Haerken
Chao-Hong Ma
Hong-Bo Cai
Xu-Hui Han
Lei Huang
Xiao-Meng Lu
Jian-Ying Bai
Xu-Kang Zhang
Xin-Li Hao
Xiang-Yu Wang
Zi-Gao Dai
En-Wei Liang
摘要： In the archive of the Ground Wide Angle Camera (GWAC), we found 43 white light flares from 43 stars, among which, three are sympathetic or homologous flares, and one of them also has a quasi-periodic pulsation with a period of $13.0\pm1.5$ minutes. Among these 43 flare stars, there are 19 new active stars and 41 stars that have available TESS and/or K2 light curves, from which we found 931 stellar flares. We also obtained rotational or orbital periods of 34 GWAC flare stars, of which 33 are less than 5.4 days, and ephemerides of three eclipsing binaries from these light curves. Combining with low resolution spectra from LAMOST and the Xinglong 2.16m telescope, we found that $L_{\rm H\alpha}/L_{\rm bol}$ are in the saturation region in the rotation-activity diagram. From the LAMOST medium-resolution spectrum, we found that Star \#3 (HAT 178-02667) has double H$\alpha$ emissions which imply it is a binary, and two components are both active stars. Thirteen stars have flare frequency distributions (FFDs) from TESS and/or K2 light curves. These FFDs show that the flares detected by GWAC can occur at a frequency of 0.5 to 9.5 yr$^{-1}$. The impact of flares on habitable planets was also studied based on these FFDs, and flares from some GWAC flare stars may produce enough energetic flares to destroy ozone layers, but none can trigger prebiotic chemistry on their habitable planets.
分类： 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
摘要： We use 789 disk-like, star-forming galaxies (with 596 HI detections) from HI follow-up observations for the SDSS-IV MaNGA survey to study the possible role of inner HI gas in causing secondary dependences in the mass-gas-phase metallicity relation. We use the gas-phase metallicity derived at the effective radii of the galaxies. We derive the inner HI mass witHIn the optical radius, but also use the total HI mass and star formation rate (SFR) for a comparison. We confirm the anticorrelation between the total HI mass and gas-phase metallicity at fixed stellar mass, but the anticorrelation is significantly strengthened when the total HI mass is replaced by the inner HI mass. Introducing a secondary relation with the inner HI mass can produce a small but noticeable decrease (16%) in the scatter of the mass-gas-phase metallicity relation, in contrast to the negligible effect with the SFR. The correlation with the inner HI mass is robust when using different diagnostics of metallicity, but the correlation with SFR is not. The correlation with the inner HI mass becomes much weaker when the gas-phase metallicity is derived in the central region instead of at the effective radius. These results support the idea that the scatter in the mass-metallicity relation is regulated by gas accretion, and not directly by the SFR, and stress the importance of deriving the gas mass and the metallicity from roughly the same region. The new relation between inner HI mass and gas-phase metallicity will provide new constraints for chemical and galaxy evolution models.
分类： 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
Shin-Jeong Kim
Se-Heon Oh
Jing Wang
Lister Staveley-Smith
Bärbel S. Koribalski
Minsu Kim
Hye-Jin Park
Shinna Kim
Kristine Spekkens
Tobias Westmeier
O. Ivy Wong
Gerhardt R. Meurer
Peter Kamphuis.
Barbara Catinella
Kristen B. W. McQuinn
Frank Bigiel
Benne W. Holwerda
Jonghwan Rhee
Karen Lee-Waddell
Nathan Deg
摘要： We examine the HI gas kinematics of galaxy pairs in two clusters and a group using Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) WALLABY pilot survey observations. We compare the HI properties of galaxy pair candidates in the Hydra I and Norma clusters, and the NGC 4636 group, with those of non-paired control galaxies selected in the same fields. We perform HI profile decomposition of the sample galaxies using a tool, {\sc baygaud} which allows us to de-blend a line-of-sight velocity profile with an optimal number of Gaussian components. We construct HI super-profiles of the sample galaxies via stacking of their line profiles after aligning the central velocities. We fit a double Gaussian model to the super-profiles and classify them as kinematically narrow and broad components with respect to their velocity dispersions. Additionally, we investigate the gravitational instability of HI gas disks of the sample galaxies using Toomre Q parameters and HI morphological disturbances. We investigate the effect of the cluster environment on the HI properties of galaxy pairs by dividing the cluster environment into three subcluster regions (i.e., outskirts, infalling and central regions). We find that the denser cluster environment (i.e., infalling and central regions) is likely to impact the HI gas properties of galaxies in a way of decreasing the amplitude of the kinematically narrow HI gas ($M_{\rm{narrow}}^{\rm{HI}}$/$M_{\rm{total}}^{\rm{HI}}$), and increasing the Toomre Q values of the infalling and central galaxies. This tendency is likely to be more enhanced for galaxy pairs in the cluster environment.
分类： 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
Jing Wang
Dong Yang
Se-Heon Oh
Lister Staveley-Smith
Jie Wang
Q. Daniel Wang
Kelley M. Hess
Luis C. Ho
Ligang Hou
Yingjie Jing
Peter Kamphuis
Fujia Li
Xuchen Lin
Ziming Liu
Li Shao
Shun Wang
Ming Zhu
摘要： We use the single-dish radio telescope FAST to map the HI in the tidally interacting NGC 4631 group with a resolution of 3.24$'$ (7 kpc), reaching a 5-$\sigma$ column density limit of $10^{17.9}$ cm$^{-2}$ assuming a line width of 20 km s$^{-1}$. Taking the existing interferometric HI image from the HALOGAS project of WSRT as reference, we are able to identify and characterize a significant excess of large-scale, low-density, and diffuse HI in the group. This diffuse HI extends for more than 120 kpc across, and accounts for more than one fourth of the total HI detected by FAST in and around the galaxy NGC 4631. In the region of the tidal tails, the diffuse HI has a typical column density above $10^{19.5}$ cm$^{-2}$, and is highly turbulent with a velocity dispersion around 50 km s$^{-1}$. It increases in column density with the dense HI, and tends to be associated with the kinematically ``hotter'' part of the dense HI. Through simple modeling, we find that the majority of the diffuse HI in the tail region is likely to induce cooling out of the hot IGM instead of evaporating or being radiatively ionized. Given these relations of gas in different phases, the diffuse HI may represent a condensing phase of the IGM. Active tidal interactions on-going and in the past may have produced the wide-spreading HI distribution, and triggered the gas accretion to NGC 4631 through the phase of the diffuse HI.
分类： 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
Yun Zheng
Jing Wang
Judith Irwin
Q. Daniel Wang
Jiangtao Li
Jayanne English
Qingchuan Ma
Ran Wang
Ke Wang
Marita Krause
Toky H. Randriamampandry
Rainer Beck
摘要： We study the vertical distribution of the highly inclined galaxies from the Continuum Halos in Nearby Galaxies - an EVLA Survey (CHANG-ES). We explore the feasibility of photometrically deriving the HI disk scale-heights from the moment-0 images of the relatively edge-on galaxies with inclination >80 deg, by quantifying the systematic broadening effects and thus deriving correction equations for direct measurements. The corrected HI disk scale-heights of the relatively edge-on galaxies from the CHANG-ES sample show trends consistent with the quasi-equilibrium model of the vertical structure of gas disks. The procedure provide a convenient way to derive the scale-heights and can easily be applied to statistical samples in the future.
分类： 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
Guang-Wei Li
Chao Wu
Gui-Ping Zhou
Chen Yang
Hua-Li Li
Jie Chen
Li-Ping Xin
Jing Wang
Hasitieer Haerken
Chao-Hong Ma
Hong-Bo Cai
Xu-Hui Han
Lei Huang
Xiao-Meng Lu
Jian-Ying Bai
Xu-Kang Zhang
Xin-Li Hao
Xiang-Yu Wang
Zi-Gao Dai
En-Wei Liang
摘要： In the archive of the Ground Wide Angle Camera (GWAC), we found 43 white light flares from 43 stars, among which, three are sympathetic or homologous flares, and one of them also has a quasi-periodic pulsation with a period of $13.0\pm1.5$ minutes. Among these 43 flare stars, there are 19 new active stars and 41 stars that have available TESS and/or K2 light curves, from which we found 931 stellar flares. We also obtained rotational or orbital periods of 34 GWAC flare stars, of which 33 are less than 5.4 days, and ephemerides of three eclipsing binaries from these light curves. Combining with low resolution spectra from LAMOST and the Xinglong 2.16m telescope, we found that $L_{\rm H\alpha}/L_{\rm bol}$ are in the saturation region in the rotation-activity diagram. From the LAMOST medium-resolution spectrum, we found that Star \#3 (HAT 178-02667) has double H$\alpha$ emissions which imply it is a binary, and two components are both active stars. Thirteen stars have flare frequency distributions (FFDs) from TESS and/or K2 light curves. These FFDs show that the flares detected by GWAC can occur at a frequency of 0.5 to 9.5 yr$^{-1}$. The impact of flares on habitable planets was also studied based on these FFDs, and flares from some GWAC flare stars may produce enough energetic flares to destroy ozone layers, but none can trigger prebiotic chemistry on their habitable planets.
分类： 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
摘要： We investigate the influence of active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback on the galaxy cold gas content and its connection to galaxy quenching in three hydrodynamical simulations of Illustris, IllustrisTNG and SIMBA. By comparing to the observed atomic and molecular neutral hydrogen measurements for central galaxies, we find that Illustris over-predicts the cold gas masses in star-forming galaxies and significantly under-predicts them for quenched galaxies. IllustrisTNG performs better in this comparison than Illustris, but quenched galaxies retain too much cold gas compared with observations. SIMBA shows good agreement with observations, by depleting the global cold gas reservoir for quenched galaxies. We find that the discrepancies in IllustrisTNG are caused by its weak kinetic AGN feedback that only redistributes the cold gas from the inner disks to the outer regions and reduces the inner cold gas densities. It agrees with observations much better when only the cold gas within the stellar disk is considered to infer the star formation rates. From dependences of cold gas reservoir on the black hole mass and Eddington ratio, we find that the cumulative energy release during the black hole growth is the dominant reason for the cold gas depletion and thus the galaxy quenching. We further measure the central stellar surface density within 1 kpc ($\Sigma_1$) for the high-resolution run of IllustrisTNG and find a tight correlation between $\Sigma_1$ and black hole mass. It suggests that the observed decreasing trend of cold gas mass with $\Sigma_1$ is also a reflection of the black hole growth.
分类： 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
摘要： We investigate the impact of spiral structure on global star formation using a sample of 2226 nearby bright disk galaxies. Examining the relationship between spiral arms, star formation rate (SFR), and stellar mass, we find that arm strength correlates well with the variation of SFR as a function of stellar mass. Arms are stronger above the star-forming galaxy main sequence (MS) and weaker below it: arm strength increases with higher $\log\,({\rm SFR}/{\rm SFR}_{\rm MS})$, where ${\rm SFR}_{\rm MS}$ is the SFR along the MS. Likewise, stronger arms are associated with higher specific SFR. We confirm this trend using the optical colors of a larger sample of 4378 disk galaxies, whose position on the blue cloud also depends systematically on spiral arm strength. This link is independent of other galaxy structural parameters. For the subset of galaxies with cold gas measurements, arm strength positively correlates with HI and H$_2$ mass fraction, even after removing the mutual dependence on $\log\,({\rm SFR}/{\rm SFR}_{\rm MS})$, consistent with the notion that spiral arms are maintained by dynamical cooling provided by gas damping. For a given gas fraction, stronger arms lead to higher $\log\,({\rm SFR}/{\rm SFR}_{\rm MS})$, resulting in a trend of increasing arm strength with shorter gas depletion time. We suggest a physical picture in which the dissipation process provided by gas damping maintains spiral structure, which, in turn, boosts the star formation efficiency of the gas reservoir.
分类： 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
摘要： The growth of supermassive black holes, especially the associated state of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), is generally believed to be the key step in regulating star formation in massive galaxies. As the fuel of star formation, the cold gas reservoir is a direct probe of the effect of AGN feedback on their host galaxies. However, in observation, no clear connection has been found between AGN activity and the cold gas mass. In this paper, we find observational signals of significant depletion of the total neutral hydrogen gas reservoir in optically-selected type-2 AGN host central galaxies of stellar mass $10^{9}$--$10^{10}M_\odot$. The effect of AGN feedback on the cold gas reservoir is stronger for higher star formation rates and higher AGN luminosity. But it becomes much weaker above this mass range, consistent with previous findings focusing on massive galaxies. Our result suggests that low-mass and gas-rich AGN host central galaxies would first form dense cores before AGN feedback is triggered, removing their neutral hydrogen gas. More massive central galaxies may undergo a significantly different formation scenario by gradually building up dense cores with less effective and recurrent AGN feedback.
分类： 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
Shun Wang
Jing Wang
Bi-Qing For
Bumhyun Lee
Tristan Reynolds
Xuchen Lin
Lister Staveley-Smith
Li Shao
O. Ivy Wong
Barbara Catinella
Paolo Serra
Lourdes Verdes-Montenegro
Tobias Westmeier
Karen Lee-Waddell
Baerbel S. Koribalski
Chandrashekar Murugeshan
Ahmed Elagali
Dane Kleiner
Jonghwan Rhee
Frank Bigiel
摘要： We study the tidal interaction of galaxies in the Eridanus supergroup, using HI data from the pre-pilot survey of WALLABY (Widefield ASKAP L-band Legacy All-sky Blind surveY). We obtain optical photometric measurements and quantify the strength of tidal perturbation using a tidal parameter $S_{sum}$. For low-mass galaxies of $M_* \lesssim 10^9 M_\odot$, we find a dependence of decreasing HI-to-optical disk size ratio with increasing $S_{sum}$, but no dependence of HI spectral line asymmetry with $S_{sum}$. This is consistent with the behavior expected under tidal stripping. We confirm that the color profile shape and color gradient depend on the stellar mass, but there is additional correlation of low-mass galaxies having their color gradients within $2R_{50}$ increasing with higher $S_{sum}$. For these low-mass galaxies, the dependence of color gradients on $S_{sum}$ is driven by color becoming progressively redder in the inner disk when tidal perturbations are stronger. For high-mass galaxies, there is no dependence of color gradients on $S_{sum}$, and we find a marginal reddening throughout the disks with increasing $S_{sum}$. Our result highlights tidal interaction as an important environmental effect in producing the faint end of the star formation suppressed sequence in galaxy groups.
分类： 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
Li-Yuan Lu
Jiang-Tao Li
Carlos J. Vargas
Rainer Beck
Joel N. Bregman
Ralf-Jurgen Dettmar
Jayanne English
Taotao Fang
George H. Heald
Hui Li
Zhijie Qu
Richard J. Rand
Michael Stein
Q. Daniel Wang
Jing Wang
Theresa Wiegert
Yun Zheng
摘要： The extraplanar diffuse ionized gas (eDIG) represents the cool/warm ionized gas reservoir around galaxies. We present a spatial analysis of H$\alpha$ images of 22 nearby edge-on spiral galaxies from the CHANG-ES sample (the eDIG-CHANGES project), taken with the APO 3.5m telescope, in order to study their eDIG. We conduct an exponential fit to the vertical intensity profiles of the sample galaxies, of which 16 can be decomposed into a thin disk plus an extended thick disk component. The median value of the scale height (h) of the extended component is $1.13\pm 0.14$ kpc. We find a tight sublinear correlation between h and the SFR. Moreover, the offset of individual galaxies from the best-fit SFR-h relation shows significant anti-correlation with SFR_SD. This indicates that galaxies with more intense star formation tend to have disproportionately extended eDIG. Combined with data from the literature, we find that the correlations between the eDIG properties and the galaxies' properties extend to broader ranges. We further compare the vertical extension of the eDIG to multi-wavelength measurements of other CGM phases. We find the eDIG to be slightly more extended than the neutral gas (HI 21-cm line), indicating the existence of some extended ionizing sources. Most galaxies have an X-ray scale height smaller than the h, suggesting that the majority of the X-ray emission detected in shallow observations are actually from the thick disk. The h is comparable to the L-band radio continuum scale height, both slightly larger than that at higher frequencies (C-band), where the cooling is stronger and the thermal contribution may be larger. The comparable H$\alpha$ and L-band scale height indicates that the thermal and non-thermal electrons have similar spatial distributions. This further indicates that the thermal gas, the cosmics rays, and the magnetic field may be close to energy equipartition.
分类： 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
摘要： We present a uniform analysis of the integrated profile of the H I emission line of 29,958 nearby ($z < 0.06$) galaxies extracted from the ALFALFA 21 cm survey. We apply the curve-of-growth technique to derive a database of spectral parameters and robust estimates of their associated uncertainties. Besides the central velocity and total flux, the main catalog provides new measures of line width, profile asymmetry, and profile shape. For a subsample of 13,511 galaxies with optical properties available from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we compute inclination angle-corrected line widths, rotation velocities empirically calibrated from spatially resolved observations, and dynamical masses based on H I sizes estimated from the H I mass. To facilitate subsequent scientific applications of the database, we also compile a number of ancillary physical properties of the galaxies, including their optical morphology, stellar mass, and various diagnostics of star formation activity. We use the homogeneous catalog of H I parameters to examine the statistical properties of profile asymmetry and shape. Across the full sample, which covers a wide range of stellar masses and environments, statistically significant H I profile asymmetry is detected in $\sim 20\%$ of the galaxy population. The global H I profiles are $35.2 \pm 0.3\%$ single-peaked, $26.9 \pm 0.3\%$ flat-topped, and $37.9 \pm 0.3\%$ double-horned. At a given inclination angle, double-horned profiles are preferentially associated with galaxies of higher stellar mass or optical concentration, while galaxies of lower mass or concentration tend to have single-peaked profiles.
分类： 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
Yun Zheng
Jing Wang
Judith Irwin
Jayanne English
Qingchuan Ma
Ran Wang
Ke Wang
Q. Daniel Wang
Marita Krause
Toky H. Randriamampandry
Jiangtao Li
Rainer Beck
摘要： We present the HI distribution of galaxies from the Continuum Halos in Nearby Galaxies - an EVLA Survey (CHANG-ES). Though the observational mode was not optimized for detecting HI, we successfully produce HI cubes for 19 galaxies. The moment-0 maps from this work are available on CHANG-ES data release website, i.e., https://www.queensu.ca/changes. Our sample is dominated by star-forming, HI-rich galaxies at distances from 6.27 to 34.1 Mpc. HI interferometric images on two of these galaxies (NGC 5792 and UGC 10288) are presented here for the first time, while 12 of our remaining sample galaxies now have better HI spatial resolutions and/or sensitivities of intensity maps than those in existing publications. We characterize the average scale heights of the HI distributions for a subset of most inclined galaxies (inclination > 80 deg), and compare them to the radio continuum intensity scale heights, which have been derived in a similar way. The two types of scale heights are well correlated, with similar dependence on disk radial extension and star formation rate surface density but different dependence on mass surface density. This result indicates that the vertical distribution of the two components may be governed by similar fundamental physics but with subtle differences.
分类： 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
摘要： We study the role of atomic hydrogen (HI) in regulating size growth of local galaxies. The size of a galaxy, $D_{\rm r,~25}$, is characterized by the diameter at which the $r-$band surface brightness reaches $\mu_{\rm r}=25.0~\rm mag~arcsec^{-2}$. We find that the positions of galaxies in the size ($D_{\rm r,~25}$)$-$stellar mass ($M_{\ast}$) plane strongly depend on their HI-to-stellar mass ratio ($M_{\rm HI}/M_{\ast}$). In the HI-rich regime, galaxies that are more rich in HI tend to have larger sizes. Such a trend is not seen in the HI-poor regime, suggesting that size growth is barely affected by the HI content when it has declined to a sufficiently low level. An investigation of the relations between size, $M_{\rm HI}/M_{\ast}$ and star formation rate (SFR) suggests that size is more intrinsically linked with $M_{\rm HI}/M_{\ast}$, rather than SFR. We further examine the HI-to-stellar disk size ratio ($D_{\rm HI}/D_{\rm r,~25}$) of galaxies and find that at log($M_{\rm HI}/M_{\ast})>-0.7$, $D_{\rm HI}/D_{\rm r,~25}$ is weakly correlated with $M_{\ast}$. These findings support a picture in which the HI-rich galaxies live in an inside-out disk growing phase regulated by gas accretion and star formation. The angular momentum of the accreted materials is probably the key parameter in shaping the size of an HI-rich galaxy.
分类： 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
Jing Wang
Lister Staveley-Smith
Tobias Westmeier
Barbara Catinella
Li Shao
T. N. Reynolds
Bi-Qing For
Bumhyun Lee
Ze-zhong Liang
Shun Wang
A. Elagali
H. Denes
D. Kleiner
Baerbel S. Koribalski
K. Lee-Waddell
S-H. Oh
J. Rhee
P. Serra
K. Spekkens
O. I. Wong
摘要： This study uses HI image data from the WALLABY pilot survey with the ASKAP telescope, covering the Hydra cluster out to 2.5$r_{200}$. We present the projected phase-space distribution of HI-detected galaxies in Hydra, and identify that nearly two thirds of the galaxies within $1.25r_{200}$ may be in the early stages of ram pressure stripping. More than half of these may be only weakly stripped, with the ratio of strippable HI (i.e., where the galactic restoring force is lower than the ram pressure in the disk) mass fraction (over total HI mass) distributed uniformly below 90%. Consequently, the HI mass is expected to decrease by only a few 0.1 dex after the currently strippable portion of HI in these systems has been stripped. A more detailed look at the subset of galaxies that are spatially resolved by WALLABY observations shows that, while it typically takes less than 200 Myr for ram pressure stripping to remove the currently strippable portion of HI, it may take more than 600 Myr to significantly change the total HI mass. Our results provide new clues to understanding the different rates of HI depletion and star formation quenching in cluster galaxies.
分类： 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
摘要： We present a new HI mass estimator which relates the HI-to-stellar mass ratio to four galaxy properties: stellar surface mass density, color index $u-r$, stellar mass and concentration index, with the scatter of individual galaxies around the mean HI mass modeled with a Gaussian distribution. We calibrate the estimator using the xGASS sample, including both HI detection and non-detection, and constrain the model parameters through Bayesian inferences. Tests with mock catalogs demonstrate that our estimator provides unbiased HI masses for optical samples like the SDSS, thus suitable for statistical studies of HI gas contents in galaxies and dark matter halos. We apply our estimator to the SDSS spectroscopic sample to estimate the local HI mass function (HIMF), the conditional HI mass function (CHIMF) in galaxy groups and the HI-halo mass (HIHM) relation. Our HIMF agrees with the ALFALFA measurements at $M_{HI}\gtrsim 5\times 10^9M_{\odot}$, but with higher amplitude and a steeper slope at lower masses. We show that this discrepancy is caused primarily by the cosmic variance which is corrected for the SDSS sample but not for the ALFALFA. The CHIMFs for all halo masses can be described by a single Schechter function, and this is true for red, blue and satellite galaxies. For central galaxies the CHIMFs show a double-Gaussian profile, with the two components contributed by the red and blue galaxies, respectively. The total HI mass in a group increases monotonically with halo mass. The HI mass of central galaxies in galaxy groups increases rapidly with halo mass only at $M_h\lesssim10^{12}M_{\odot}$, while the mass dependence becomes much weaker at higher halo masses. The observed HI-halo mass relation is not reproduced by current hydrodynamic simulations and semi-analytic models of galaxy formation.
分类： 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
摘要： Dual active galactic nuclei (AGN), which are the manifestation of two actively accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs) hosted by a pair of merging galaxies, are a unique laboratory for studying the physics of SMBH feeding and feedback during an indispensable stage of galaxy evolution. In this work, we present NOEMA CO(2-1) observations of seven kpc-scale dual-AGN candidates drawn from a recent Chandra survey of low-redshift, optically classified AGN pairs. These systems are selected because they show unexpectedly low 2-10 keV X-ray luminosities for their small physical separations signifying an intermediate-to-late stage of merger. Circumnuclear molecular gas traced by the CO(2-1) emission is significantly detected in 6 of the 7 pairs and 10 of the 14 nuclei, with an estimated mass ranging between $(0.2 - 21) \times10^9\rm~M_{\odot}$. The primary nuclei, i.e., the ones with the higher stellar velocity dispersion, tend to have a higher molecular gas mass than the secondary. Most CO-detected nuclei show a compact morphology, with a velocity field consistent with a kpc-scale rotating structure. The inferred hydrogen column densities range between $5\times10^{21} - 2\times10^{23}\rm~cm^{-2}$, but mostly at a few times $10^{22}\rm~cm^{-2}$, in broad agreement with those derived from X-ray spectral analysis. Together with the relatively weak mid-infrared emission, the moderate column density argues against the prevalence of heavily obscured, intrinsically luminous AGNs in these seven systems, but favors a feedback scenario in which AGN activity triggered by a recent pericentric passage of the galaxy pair can expel circumnuclear gas and suppress further SMBH accretion.
分类： 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
摘要： Inspired by our serendipitous discovery of six AGNs with varying broad-Halpha fluxes over years out of our searching for intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs), we conduct a systematic investigation of changing-look (CL) and large-variability AGNs. We collect all the CL AGNs at z<0.15 and the reverberation mapped AGNs with strongly variable broad Halpha, and perform careful decomposition fittings to both their images and spectra. We find two observational facts: (1) The host galaxies of local CL and large-variability AGNs, mainly being Seyferts, are in the red (gas-poor) tail of the general Seyfert galaxy population. (2) In contrast, there is a significant trend that their more luminous counterparts namely CL and extremely variable quasars (CLQs and EVQs) are different: CLQs are generally in blue galaxies; in terms of the diagram of SFR and M* local CL Seyfert galaxies are located in the green valley, whereas CLQ hosts are in the star-forming main sequence. We propose explanations for those strongly variable Seyferts and quasars, respectively, under the thought that accretion disks broadly depend on nuclear fueling modes. Local large-variability and CL Seyferts are in nuclear famine mode, where cold-gas clumps can be formed stochastically in the fueling flow, and their episodic infall produces sharp peaks in the accretion-rate curve. CLQs and EVQs are in feast fueling mode, which may account for both their preference to blue galaxies and their variability pattern (high-amplitude tail of the continuous distribution). Lastly, we propose a new thinking: to search for IMBHs by optical variability in red galaxies.
分类： 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
Hélène M. Courtois
Khaled Said
Jeremy Mould
T. H. Jarrett
Daniel Pomarède
Tobias Westmeier
Lister Staveley-Smith
Alexandra Dupuy
Tao Hong
Daniel Guinet
Cullan Howlett
Nathan Deg
Bi-Qing For
Dane Kleiner
Bärbel Koribalski
Karen Lee-Waddell
Jonghwan Rhee
Kristine Spekkens
Jing Wang
O. I. Wong
摘要： The WALLABY pilot survey has been conducted using the Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP). The integrated 21-cm HI line spectra are formed in a very different manner compared to usual single-dish spectra Tully-Fisher measurements. It is thus extremely important to ensure that slight differences (e.g. biases due to missing flux) are quantified and understood in order to maximise the use of the large amount of data becoming available soon. This article is based on four fields for which the data are scientifically interesting by themselves. The pilot data discussed here consist of 614 galaxy spectra at a rest wavelength of 21cm. Of these spectra, 472 are of high enough quality to be used to potentially derive distances using the Tully-Fisher relation. We further restrict the sample to the 251 galaxies whose inclination is sufficiently close to edge-on. For these, we derive Tully-Fisher distances using the deprojected WALLABY velocity widths combined with infrared (WISE W1) magnitudes. The resulting Tully-Fisher distances for the Eridanus, Hydra, Norma and NGC 4636 clusters are 21.5, 53.5, 69.4 and 23.0 Mpc respectively, with uncertainties of 5--10\%, which are better or equivalent to the ones obtained in studies using data obtained with giant single dish telescopes. The pilot survey data show the benefits of WALLABY over previous giant single-dish telescope surveys. WALLABY is expected to detect around half a million galaxies with a mean redshift of $z = 0.05 (200 Mpc)$. This study suggests that about 200,000 Tully-Fisher distances might result from the survey.
分类： 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间： 2023-02-19
摘要： Dual active galactic nuclei (AGN), which are the manifestation of two actively accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs) hosted by a pair of merging galaxies, are a unique laboratory for studying the physics of SMBH feeding and feedback during an indispensable stage of galaxy evolution. In this work, we present NOEMA CO(2-1) observations of seven kpc-scale dual-AGN candidates drawn from a recent Chandra survey of low-redshift, optically classified AGN pairs. These systems are selected because they show unexpectedly low 2-10 keV X-ray luminosities for their small physical separations signifying an intermediate-to-late stage of merger. Circumnuclear molecular gas traced by the CO(2-1) emission is significantly detected in 6 of the 7 pairs and 10 of the 14 nuclei, with an estimated mass ranging between $(0.2 - 21) \times10^9\rm~M_{\odot}$. The primary nuclei, i.e., the ones with the higher stellar velocity dispersion, tend to have a higher molecular gas mass than the secondary. Most CO-detected nuclei show a compact morphology, with a velocity field consistent with a kpc-scale rotating structure. The inferred hydrogen column densities range between $5\times10^{21} - 2\times10^{23}\rm~cm^{-2}$, but mostly at a few times $10^{22}\rm~cm^{-2}$, in broad agreement with those derived from X-ray spectral analysis. Together with the relatively weak mid-infrared emission, the moderate column density argues against the prevalence of heavily obscured, intrinsically luminous AGNs in these seven systems, but favors a feedback scenario in which AGN activity triggered by a recent pericentric passage of the galaxy pair can expel circumnuclear gas and suppress further SMBH accretion.
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