Black hole mass measurements using ionized gas discs: systematic dust effects

Using detailed Monte Carlo radiative transfer simulations in realistic models for galactic nuclei, we investigate the influence of interstellar dust in ionized gas discs on the rotation curves and the resulting black hole mass measurements. We find that absorption and scattering by interstellar dust leaves the shape of the rotation curves basically unaltered, but slightly decreases the central slope of the rotation curves. As a result, the "observed" black hole masses are systematically underestimated by some 10 to 20% for realistic optical depths. We therefore argue that the systematic effect of dust attenuation should be taken into account when estimating SMBH masses using ionized gas kinematics.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in "Observational Evidence for Black Holes in the Universe", AIP Conference Proceeding

Wearable flexible lightweight modular RFID tag with integrated energy harvester

A novel wearable radio frequency identification (RFID) tag with sensing, processing, and decision-taking capability is presented for operation in the 2.45-GHz RFID superhigh frequency (SHF) band. The tag is powered by an integrated light harvester, with a flexible battery serving as an energy buffer. The proposed active tag features excellent wearability, very high read range, enhanced functionality, flexible interfacing with diverse low-power sensors, and extended system autonomy through an innovative holistic microwave system design paradigm that takes antenna design into consideration from the very early stages. Specifically, a dedicated textile shorted circular patch antenna with monopolar radiation pattern is designed and optimized for highly efficient and stable operation within the frequency band of operation. In this process, the textile antenna's functionality is augmented by reusing its surface as an integration platform for light-energy-harvesting, sensing, processing, and transceiver hardware, without sacrificing antenna performance or the wearer's comfort. The RFID tag is validated by measuring its stand-alone and on-body characteristics in free-space conditions. Moreover, measurements in a real-world scenario demonstrate an indoor read range up to 23 m in nonline-of-sight indoor propagation conditions, enabling interrogation by a reader situated in another room. In addition, the RFID platform only consumes 168.3 mu W, when sensing and processing are performed every 60 s

New HErschel Multi-wavelength Extragalactic Survey of Edge-on Spirals (NHEMESES)

Edge-on spiral galaxies offer a unique perspective on the vertical structure of spiral disks, both stars and the iconic dark dustlanes. The thickness of these dustlanes can now be resolved for the first time with Herschel in far-infrared and sub-mm emission. We present NHEMESES, an ongoing project that targets 12 edge-on spiral galaxies with the PACS and SPIRE instruments on Herschel. These vertically resolved observations of edge-on spirals will impact on several current topics. First and foremost, these Herschel observations will settle whether or not there is a phase change in the vertical structure of the ISM with disk mass. Previously, a dramatic change in dustlane morphology was observed as in massive disks the dust collapses into a thin lane. If this is the case, the vertical balance between turbulence and gravity dictates the ISM structure and consequently star-formation and related phenomena (spiral arms, bars etc.). We specifically target lower mass nearby edge-ons to complement existing Herschel observations of high-mass edge-on spirals (the HEROES project). Secondly, the combined data-set, together with existing Spitzer observations, will drive a new generation of spiral disk Spectral Energy Distribution models. These model how dust reprocesses starlight to thermal emission but the dust geometry remains the critical unknown. And thirdly, the observations will provide an accurate and unbiased census of the cold dusty structures occasionally seen extending out of the plane of the disk, when backlit by the stellar disk. To illustrate the NHEMESES project, we present early results on NGC 4244 and NGC 891, two well studies examples of a low and high-mass edge-on spiral.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figures, to appear in the proceedings of IAU 284, "The Spectral Energy Distribution of Galaxies", (SED2011), 5-9 September 2011, Preston, UK, editors, R.J. Tuffs & C.C.Popescu (v2 updated metadata

Observational evidence for a connection between supermassive black holes and dark matter haloes

We present new velocity dispersion measurements of sample of 12 spiral galaxies for which extended rotation curves are available. These data are used to refine a recently discovered correlation between the circular velocity and the central velocity dispersion of spiral galaxies. We find a slightly steeper slope for our larger sample, we confirm the negligible intrinsic scatter on this correlation, and we find a striking agreement with a corresponding relation for elliptical galaxies. We combine this correlation with the well-known MBH-sigma relation to obtain a tight correlation between the circular velocities of galaxies and the masses of the supermassive black holes they host. This correlation is the observational evidence for an intimate link between dark matter haloes and supermassive black holes. Apart from being an important ingredient for theoretical models of galaxy formation and evolution, the relation between MBH and circular velocity can serve as a practical tool to estimate black hole masses in spiral galaxies.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS pink page

Mid-J CO Emission in Nearby Seyfert Galaxies

We study for the first time the complete sub-millimeter spectra (450 GHz to 1550 GHz) of a sample of nearby active galaxies observed with the SPIRE Fourier Transform Spectrometer (SPIRE/FTS) onboard Herschel. The CO ladder (from Jup = 4 to 12) is the most prominent spectral feature in this range. These CO lines probe warm molecular gas that can be heated by ultraviolet photons, shocks, or X-rays originated in the active galactic nucleus or in young star-forming regions. In these proceedings we investigate the physical origin of the CO emission using the averaged CO spectral line energy distribution (SLED) of six Seyfert galaxies. We use a radiative transfer model assuming an isothermal homogeneous medium to estimate the molecular gas conditions. We also compare this CO SLED with the predictions of photon and X-ray dominated region (PDR and XDR) models.Comment: Proceedings of the Torus Workshop 2012 held at the University of Texas at San Antonio, 5-7 December 2012. C. Packham, R. Mason, and A. Alonso-Herrero (eds.); 6 pages, 3 figure

The selective effect of environment on the atomic and molecular gas-to-dust ratio of nearby galaxies in the Herschel Reference Survey

We combine dust, atomic (HI) and molecular (H$_{2}$) hydrogen mass measurements for 176 galaxies in the Herschel Reference Survey to investigate the effect of environment on the gas-to-dust mass ($M_{\rm gas}/M_{\rm dust}$) ratio of nearby galaxies. We find that, at fixed stellar mass, the average $M_{\rm gas}/M_{\rm dust}$ ratio varies by no more than a factor of $\sim$2 when moving from field to cluster galaxies, with Virgo galaxies being slightly more dust rich (per unit of gas) than isolated systems. Remarkably, once the molecular and atomic hydrogen phases are investigated separately, we find that \hi-deficient galaxies have at the same time lower $M_{\rm HI}/M_{\rm dust}$ ratio but higher $M_{\rm H_{2}}/M_{\rm dust}$ ratio than \hi-normal systems. In other words, they are poorer in atomic but richer in molecular hydrogen if normalized to their dust content. By comparing our findings with the predictions of theoretical models, we show that the opposite behavior observed in the $M_{\rm HI}/M_{\rm dust}$ and $M_{\rm H_{2}}/M_{\rm dust}$ ratios is fully consistent with outside-in stripping of the interstellar medium (ISM), and is simply a consequence of the different distribution of dust, \hi\ and H$_{2}$ across the disk. Our results demonstrate that the small environmental variations in the total $M_{\rm gas}/M_{\rm dust}$ ratio, as well as in the gas-phase metallicity, do not automatically imply that environmental mechanisms are not able to affect the dust and metal content of the ISM in galaxies.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Using hierarchical octrees in Monte Carlo radiative transfer simulations

A crucial aspect of 3D Monte Carlo radiative transfer is the choice of the spatial grid used to partition the dusty medium. We critically investigate the use of octree grids in Monte Carlo dust radiative transfer, with two different octree construction algorithms (regular and barycentric subdivision) and three different octree traversal algorithms (top-down, neighbour list, and the bookkeeping method). In general, regular octree grids need higher levels of subdivision compared to the barycentric grids for a fixed maximum cell mass threshold criterion. The total number of grid cells, however, depends on the geometry of the model. Surprisingly, regular octree grid simulations turn out to be 10 to 20% more efficient in run time than the barycentric grid simulations, even for those cases where the latter contain fewer grid cells than the former. Furthermore, we find that storing neighbour lists for each cell in an octree, ordered according to decreasing overlap area, is worth the additional memory and implementation overhead: using neighbour lists can cut down the grid traversal by 20% compared to the traditional top-down method. In conclusion, the combination of a regular node subdivision and the neighbour list method results in the most efficient octree structure for Monte Carlo radiative transfer simulations.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

The Arecibo Galaxy Environment Survey: II. A HI view of the Abell cluster 1367 and its outskirts

We present 21 cm HI line observations of 5x1 square degrees centered on the local Abell cluster 1367 obtained as part of the Arecibo Galaxy Environment Survey. One hundred sources are detected (79 new HI measurements and 50 new redshifts), more than half belonging to the cluster core and its infalling region. Combining the HI data with SDSS optical imaging we show that our HI selected sample follows scaling relations similar to the ones usually observed in optically selected samples. Interestingly all galaxies in our sample appear to have nearly the same baryon fraction independently of their size, surface brightness and luminosity. The most striking difference between HI and optically selected samples resides in their large scale distribution: whereas optical and X-ray observations trace the cluster core very well, in HI there is almost no evidence of the presence of the cluster. Some implications on the determination of the cluster luminosity function and HI distribution for samples selected at different wavelength are also discussed.Comment: 22 pages, 15 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication on MNRAS Main Journal. High resolution version of this paper can be downloaded at http://www.astro.cf.ac.uk/pub/Luca.Cortese/papers/ages_a1367.pdf . Datacubes and catalogs can be downloaded at http://www.naic.edu/~ages/public_data.htm

HERschel Observations of Edge-on Spirals (HEROES). I: Far-infrared morphology and dust mass determination

Context. Edge-on spiral galaxies with prominent dust lanes provide us with an excellent opportunity to study the distribution and properties of the dust within them. The HEROES project was set up to observe a sample of seven large edge-on galaxies across various wavelengths for this investigation. Aims. Within this first paper, we present the Herschel observations and perform a qualitative and quantitative analysis on them, and we derive some global properties of the far infrared and submillimetre emission. Methods. We determine horizontal and vertical profiles from the Herschel observations of the galaxies in the sample and describe the morphology. Modified black-body fits to the global fluxes, measured using aperture photometry, result in dust temperatures and dust masses. The latter values are compared to those that are derived from radiative transfer models taken from the literature. Results. On the whole, our Herschel flux measurements agree well with archival values. We find that the exponential horizontal dust distribution model often used in the literature generally provides a good description of the observed horizontal profiles. Three out of the seven galaxies show signatures of extended vertical emission at 100 and 160 {\mu}m at the 5{\sigma} level, but in two of these it is probably due to deviations from an exactly edge-on orientation. Only for NGC 4013, a galaxy in which vertically extended dust has already been detected in optical images, we can detect vertically extended dust, and the derived scaleheight agrees with the value estimated through radiative transfer modelling. Our analysis hints at a correlation between the dust scaleheight and its degree of clumpiness, which we infer from the difference between the dust masses as calculated from modelling of optical data and from fitting the spectral energy distribution of Herschel datapoints.Comment: 21 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysic

Discovery of a pseudobulge galaxy launching powerful relativistic jets

Supermassive black holes launching plasma jets at close to the speed of light, producing gamma-rays, have ubiquitously been found to be hosted by massive elliptical galaxies. Since elliptical galaxies are generally believed to be built through galaxy mergers, active galactic nuclei (AGN) launching relativistic jets are associated with the latest stages of galaxy evolution. We have discovered a pseudobulge morphology in the host galaxy of the gamma-ray AGN PKS 2004-447. This is the first gamma-ray emitter radio-loud AGN found to have been launched from a system where both the black hole and host galaxy have been actively growing via secular processes. This is evidence of an alternative black hole-galaxy co-evolutionary path to develop powerful relativistic jets, which is not merger driven