421 research outputs found
HST images and properties of the most distant radio galaxies
We present Hubble Space Telescope images of 11 high redshift radio galaxies
(between and ). The galaxies were observed with the WFPC2 camera
in a broad band filter (F606W or F707W, roughly equivalent to V or R-band), for
2 orbits each. We find that on the scale of the HST observations there is a
wide variety of morphological structures of the hosting galaxies: most objects
have a clumpy, irregular appearance, consisting of a bright nucleus and a
number of smaller components, suggestive of merging systems. Some observed
structures could be due (at least partly) to the presence of dust distributed
through the galaxies. The UV continuum emission is generally elongated and
aligned with the axis of the radio sources, however the characteristics of the
``alignment effect'' differ from case to case, suggesting that the phenomenon
cannot be explained by a single physical mechanism. We compare the properties
of our radio galaxies with those of the
UV dropout galaxies and conclude that (i) the most massive radio galaxies may
well evolve from an aggregate of UV dropout galaxies and (ii) high redshift
radio galaxies probably evolve into present day brightest cluster galaxies.Comment: 22 pages, 30 figures, accepted by A&
Search for clusters at high redshift - I. Candidate Lya emitters near 1138-262 at z=2.2
Radio, optical and X-ray observations of the powerful radio galaxy PKS
1138-262 at z=2.156 have suggested that this galaxy is a massive galaxy in the
center of a forming cluster. We have imaged 1138-262 and the surrounding 38
square arcminute field with the Very Large Telescope in a broad band and a
narrow band encompassing the redshifted Lya emission. We detect 50 objects with
rest equivalent width larger than 20 A and a luminous, highly extended Lya halo
around 1138-262. If the radio galaxy is at the center of a forming cluster,
these objects are candidate Lya emitting cluster galaxies.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A as Letter, 4 pages, 4 figure
Approximating a Behavioural Pseudometric without Discount for<br> Probabilistic Systems
Desharnais, Gupta, Jagadeesan and Panangaden introduced a family of
behavioural pseudometrics for probabilistic transition systems. These
pseudometrics are a quantitative analogue of probabilistic bisimilarity.
Distance zero captures probabilistic bisimilarity. Each pseudometric has a
discount factor, a real number in the interval (0, 1]. The smaller the discount
factor, the more the future is discounted. If the discount factor is one, then
the future is not discounted at all. Desharnais et al. showed that the
behavioural distances can be calculated up to any desired degree of accuracy if
the discount factor is smaller than one. In this paper, we show that the
distances can also be approximated if the future is not discounted. A key
ingredient of our algorithm is Tarski's decision procedure for the first order
theory over real closed fields. By exploiting the Kantorovich-Rubinstein
duality theorem we can restrict to the existential fragment for which more
efficient decision procedures exist
Radiative Shock-Induced Collapse of Intergalactic Clouds
Accumulating observational evidence for a number of radio galaxies suggests
an association between their jets and regions of active star formation. The
standard picture is that shocks generated by the jet propagate through an
inhomogeneous medium and trigger the collapse of overdense clouds, which then
become active star-forming regions. In this contribution, we report on recent
hydrodynamic simulations of radiative shock-cloud interactions using two
different cooling models: an equilibrium cooling-curve model assuming solar
metallicities and a non-equilibrium chemistry model appropriate for primordial
gas clouds. We consider a range of initial cloud densities and shock speeds in
order to quantify the role of cooling in the evolution. Our results indicate
that for moderate cloud densities (>1 cm^{-3}) and shock Mach numbers (<20),
cooling processes can be highly efficient and result in more than 50% of the
initial cloud mass cooling to below 100 K. We also use our results to estimate
the final H_2 mass fraction for the simulations that use the non-equilibrium
chemistry package. This is an important measurement, since H_2 is the dominant
coolant for a primordial gas cloud. We find peak H_2 mass fractions of >0.01
and total H_2 mass fractions of >10^{-5} for the cloud gas. Finally, we compare
our results with the observations of jet-induced star formation in
``Minkowski's Object.'' We conclude that its morphology, star formation rate (~
0.3M_solar/yr) and stellar mass (~ 1.2 x 10^7 M_solar) can be explained by the
interaction of a 90,000 km/s jet with an ensemble of moderately dense (~ 10
cm^{-3}), warm (10^4 K) intergalactic clouds in the vicinity of its associated
radio galaxy at the center of the galaxy cluster.Comment: 30 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Astrophysical Journa
Protoclusters associated with z > 2 radio galaxies. I. Characteristics of high redshift protoclusters
[Abridged] We present the results of a large program conducted with the Very
Large Telescope and Keck telescope to search for forming clusters of galaxies
near powerful radio galaxies at 2.0 < z < 5.2. We obtained narrow- and
broad-band images of nine radio galaxies and their surroundings. The imaging
was used to select candidate Lyman alpha emitting galaxies in ~3x3 Mpc^2 areas
near the radio galaxies. A total of 337 candidate emitters were found with a
rest-frame Lyman alpha equivalent width of EW_0 > 15 A and Sigma = EW_0/Delta
EW_0 > 3. Follow-up spectroscopy confirmed 168 Lyman alpha emitters near eight
radio galaxies. The success rate of our selection procedure is 91%. At least
six of our eight fields are overdense in Lyman alpha emitters by a factor 3-5.
Also, the emitters show significant clustering in velocity space. In the
overdense fields, the width of the velocity distributions of the emitters is a
factor 2-5 smaller than the width of the narrow-band filters. Taken together,
we conclude that we have discovered six forming clusters of galaxies
(protoclusters). We estimate that roughly 75% of powerful (L_2.7GHz > 10^33
erg/s/Hz/sr) high redshift radio galaxies reside in a protocluster, with a
sizes of at least 1.75 Mpc. We estimate that the protoclusters have masses in
the range 2-9 x 10^14 Msun and they are likely to be progenitors of present-day
(massive) clusters of galaxies. For the first time, we have been able to
estimate the velocity dispersion of cluster progenitors from z~5 to ~2. The
velocity dispersion of the emitters increases with cosmic time, in agreement
with the dark matter velocity dispersion in numerical simulations of forming
massive clusters.Comment: 30 pages, 20 figures. Published in A&A. The article with high
resolution figures is available at
http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~venemans/research/datapaper/index.htm
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