Arp102B: An ADAF and a Torus ?

Arp102B is a nearby radio galaxy which displays the presence of double peaked Balmer emission lines. Sub-arcsec Keck mid-infrared imaging and Spitzer spectroscopy reveal a spatially compact mid-infrared source which displays tentative evidence for variability. The F$_{\nu}\propto\nu^{-1.2}$ spectral energy distribution is suggestive of an advection dominated accretion flow. The absence of dust features over the 5-40 micron range make it unlikely that thermal dust emission dominates the mid-infrared luminosity. We also detect the presence of molecular hydrogen in emission which is asymmetrically redshifted by ~500-1000 km/s from the systemic velocity of the galaxy. Since the forbidden, low ionization lines in this galaxy are at the systemic velocity, we suggest that the molecular hydrogen emission arises from a rotating molecular gas structure surrounding the nuclear black hole at a distance of ~1 pc.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, Conference proceedings to appear in "The Central Engine of Active Galactic Nuclei", ed. L. C. Ho and J.-M. Wang (San Francisco: ASP

On Mori cone of Bott towers

A Bott tower of height $r$ is a sequence of projective bundles $$X_r \overset{{\pi_r}}\longrightarrow X_{r-1} \overset{\pi_{r-1}}\longrightarrow \cdots \overset{\pi_2}\longrightarrow X_1=\mathbb P^1 \overset{\pi_1} \longrightarrow X_0=\{pt\},$$ where $X_i=\mathbb P (\mathcal O_{X_{i-1}}\oplus \mathcal L_{i-1})$ for a line bundle $\mathcal L_{i-1}$ over $X_{i-1}$ for all $1\leq i\leq r$ and $\mathbb P(-)$ denotes the projectivization. These are smooth projective toric varieties and we refer to the top object $X_{r}$ also as a Bott tower. In this article, we study the Mori cone and numerically effective (nef) cone of Bott towers, and we classify Fano, weak Fano and log Fano Bott towers. We prove some vanishing theorems for the cohomology of tangent bundle of Bott towers.Comment: The conditions in Theorem 6.3 have been correcte

Insights into galaxy evolution from mid-infrared wavelengths

In this paper, I have attempted to highlight key results from deep extragalactic surveys at mid-infrared wavelengths. I discuss advances in our understanding of dust enshrouded star-formation and AGN activity at 0 3 will become possible only with future facilities like ALMA. Currently, the presence of dust can only be assessed in a small fraction of the youngest starbursts at z > 5 by looking for redshifted large equivalent width Hα emission in broadband filters like the IRAC 4.5μm passband. Hα to UV ratios in these objects are a tracer of dust extinction and measuring this ratio in GOODS galaxies indicate dust in ~20% of star-forming galaxies at z > 5. Finally, implications for reionization based on the measured stellar mass density and star-formation rates of galaxies at these redshifts are discussed

Unveiling the Progenitors of GRBs through Observations of their Host Galaxies

I discuss the possibility of differentiating between popular models for gamma-ray bursts by using multiwavelength observations to constrain the characteristics of their host galaxies, in particular the age of the stellar populations.Comment: 3 pages, Proceedings of "Gamma-Ray Burst and Afterglow Astronomy 2001: A Workshop Celebrating the First Year of the HETE Mission", AI

Searching for the Highest Redshift Sources in 250-500 μm Submillimeter Surveys

We explore a technique for identifying the highest redshift (z>4) sources in Herschel/SPIRE and BLAST submillimeter surveys by localizing the position of the far-infrared dust peak. Just as Spitzer/IRAC was used to identify stellar "bump" sources, the far-IR peak is also a redshift indicator; although the latter also depends on the average dust temperature. We demonstrate the wide range of allowable redshifts for a reasonable range of dust temperatures and show that it is impossible to constraint the redshift of individual objects using solely the position of the far-IR peak. By fitting spectral energy distribution models to simulated Herschel/SPIRE photometry we show the utility of radio and/or far-infrared data in breaking this degeneracy. With prior knowledge of the dust temperature distribution it is possible to obtain statistical samples of high redshift submillimeter galaxy (SMG) candidates. We apply this technique to the BLAST survey of ECDFS to constrain the number of dusty galaxies at z>4. We find 8 ± 2 galaxies with flux density ratios of S_(500)_>S_(350); this sets an upper limit of 17 ± 4 deg^(–2) if we assume all are at z>4. This is 45 mJy (L_(IR)>2 × 10^(13) L_☉ for z>4). Modeling with conventional temperature and redshift distributions estimates the percentage of these 500 μm peak galaxies at z>4 to be between 10% and 85%. Our results are consistent with other estimates of the number density of very high redshift SMGs and follow the decline in the star formation rate density at z>4