6,793 research outputs found
Modelling CO emission from hydrodynamic simulations of nearby spirals, starbursting mergers, and high-redshift galaxies
We model the intensity of emission lines from the CO molecule, based on
hydrodynamic simulations of spirals, mergers, and high-redshift galaxies with
very high resolutions (3pc and 10^3 Msun) and detailed models for the
phase-space structure of the interstellar gas including shock heating, stellar
feedback processes and galactic winds. The simulations are analyzed with a
Large Velocity Gradient (LVG) model to compute the local emission in various
molecular lines in each resolution element, radiation transfer and opacity
effects, and the intensity emerging from galaxies, to generate synthetic
spectra for various transitions of the CO molecule. This model reproduces the
known properties of CO spectra and CO-to-H2 conversion factors in nearby
spirals and starbursting major mergers. The high excitation of CO lines in
mergers is dominated by an excess of high-density gas, and the high turbulent
velocities and compression that create this dense gas excess result in broad
linewidths and low CO intensity-to-H2 mass ratios. When applied to
high-redshift gas-rich disks galaxies, the same model predicts that their
CO-to-H2 conversion factor is almost as high as in nearby spirals, and much
higher than in starbursting mergers. High-redshift disk galaxies contain giant
star-forming clumps that host a high-excitation component associated to gas
warmed by the spatially-concentrated stellar feedback sources, although CO(1-0)
to CO(3-2) emission is overall dominated by low-excitation gas around the
densest clumps. These results overall highlight a strong dependence of CO
excitation and the CO-to-H2 conversion factor on galaxy type, even at similar
star formation rates or densities. The underlying processes are driven by the
interstellar medium structure and turbulence and its response to stellar
feedback, which depend on global galaxy structure and in turn impact the CO
emission properties.Comment: A&A in pres
RHAPSODY-G simulations II - Baryonic growth and metal enrichment in massive galaxy clusters
We study the evolution of the stellar component and the metallicity of both
the intracluster medium and of stars in massive ( M) simulated galaxy clusters from the Rhapsody-G suite in
detail and compare them to observational results. The simulations were
performed with the AMR code RAMSES and include the effect of AGN feedback at
the sub-grid level. AGN feedback is required to produce realistic galaxy and
cluster properties and plays a role in mixing material in the central regions
and regulating star formation in the central galaxy. In both our low and high
resolution runs with fiducial stellar yields, we find that stellar and ICM
metallicities are a factor of two lower than in observations. We find that cool
core clusters exhibit steeper metallicity gradients than non-cool core
clusters, in qualitative agreement with observations. We verify that the ICM
metallicities measured in the simulation can be explained by a simple
"regulator" model in which the metallicity is set by a balance of stellar yield
and gas accretion. It is plausible that a combination of higher resolution and
higher metal yield in AMR simulation would allow the metallicity of simulated
clusters to match observed values; however this hypothesis needs to be tested
with future simulations. Comparison to recent literature highlights that
results concerning the metallicity of clusters and cluster galaxies might
depend sensitively on the scheme chosen to solve the hydrodynamics.Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication on MNRA
Rhapsody-G simulations: galaxy clusters as baryonic closed boxes and the covariance between hot gas and galaxies
Within a sufficiently large cosmic volume, conservation of baryons implies a
simple `closed box' view in which the sum of the baryonic components must equal
a constant fraction of the total enclosed mass. We present evidence from
Rhapsody-G hydrodynamic simulations of massive galaxy clusters that the
closed-box expectation may hold to a surprising degree within the interior,
non-linear regions of haloes. At a fixed halo mass, we find a significant
anti-correlation between hot gas mass fraction and galaxy mass fraction (cold
gas + stars), with a rank correlation coefficient of -0.69 within .
Because of this anti-correlation, the total baryon mass serves as a low-scatter
proxy for total cluster mass. The fractional scatter of total baryon fraction
scales approximately as , while the scatter of
either gas mass or stellar mass is larger in magnitude and declines more slowly
with increasing radius. We discuss potential observational tests using cluster
samples selected by optical and hot gas properties; the simulations suggest
that joint selection on stellar and hot gas has potential to achieve 5% scatter
in total halo mass.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables; replaced to match published versio
Environmental regulation of cloud and star formation in galactic bars
The strong time-dependence of the dynamics of galactic bars yields a complex
and rapidly evolving distribution of dense gas and star forming regions.
Although bars mainly host regions void of any star formation activity, their
extremities can gather the physical conditions for the formation of molecular
complexes and mini-starbursts. Using a sub-parsec resolution hydrodynamical
simulation of a Milky Way-like galaxy, we probe these conditions to explore how
and where bar (hydro-)dynamics favours the formation or destruction of
molecular clouds and stars. The interplay between the kpc-scale dynamics (gas
flows, shear) and the parsec-scale (turbulence) is key to this problem. We find
a strong dichotomy between the leading and trailing sides of the bar, in term
of cloud fragmentation and in the age distribution of the young stars. After
orbiting along the bar edge, these young structures slow down at the
extremities of the bar, where orbital crowding increases the probability of
cloud-cloud collision. We find that such events increase the Mach number of the
cloud, leading to an enhanced star formation efficiency and finally the
formation of massive stellar associations, in a fashion similar to
galaxy-galaxy interactions. We highlight the role of bar dynamics in decoupling
young stars from the clouds in which they form, and discuss the implications on
the injection of feedback into the interstellar medium, in particular in the
context of galaxy formation.Comment: MNRAS accepte
The hyperfine structure in the rotational spectrum of CF+
Context. CF+ has recently been detected in the Horsehead and Orion Bar
photo-dissociation regions. The J=1-0 line in the Horsehead is double-peaked in
contrast to other millimeter lines. The origin of this double-peak profile may
be kinematic or spectroscopic. Aims. We investigate the effect of hyperfine
interactions due to the fluorine nucleus in CF+ on the rotational transitions.
Methods. We compute the fluorine spin rotation constant of CF+ using high-level
quantum chemical methods and determine the relative positions and intensities
of each hyperfine component. This information is used to fit the theoretical
hyperfine components to the observed CF+ line profiles, thereby employing the
hyperfine fitting method in GILDAS. Results. The fluorine spin rotation
constant of CF+ is 229.2 kHz. This way, the double-peaked CF+ line profiles are
well fitted by the hyperfine components predicted by the calculations. The
unusually large hyperfine splitting of the CF+ line therefore explains the
shape of the lines detected in the Horsehead nebula, without invoking intricate
kinematics in the UV-illuminated gas.Comment: 2 pages, 1 figure, Accepted for publication in A&
Gamma ray and Neutrino fluxes from a cosmological dark matter simulation
In this paper, we estimate the gamma-ray and neutrino fluxes coming from dark
matter annihilation in a Milky Way framework provided by a recent N-BODY
HORIZON simulation. We first study the characteristics of the simulation and
highlight the mass distribution within the galactic halo. The general dark
matter density has a typical power law for large radii, but the inner
behaviour is poorly constrained below the resolution of the simulation ( pc). We identify clumps and subclumps and analyze their distribution, as
well as their internal structure. Inside the clumps, the power law is rather
universal, in the outer part with again strong uncertainties for
smaller radii, especially for light clumps. We show a full-sky map of the
astrophysical contribution to the gamma-ray or neutrino fluxes in this N-body
framework. Using quite model independent and general assumptions for the high
energy physics part, we evaluate the possible absolute fluxes and show some
benchmark regions for the experiments GLAST, EGRET, and a km3 size extension of
ANTARES like the KM3NeT project. While individual clumps seem to be beyond
detection reach, the galactic center region is promising and GLAST could be
sensitive to the geometry and the structure of its dark matter distribution.
The detection by a km3 version of ANTARES is, however, more challenging due to
a higher energy threshold. We also point out that the lack of resolution leaves
the inner structure of subhalos poorly constrained. Using the same clump
spectrum and mass fraction, a clump luminosity boost of order ten can be
achieved with a steeper profile in the inner part of the sub-halos.Comment: 15 pages, 8 figure
XMM -Newton observations of merging clusters of galaxies: A3921 and A1750
We show the XMM-Newton guaranted time observations of 2 clusters of galaxies
in a different stage of merger.Comment: 4 pages, LaTex, 9 figures. To appear in the Proceedings of the
Conference "New Visions of the X-ray Universe in the XMM-Newton and Chandra
era" -ESTEC - Noordwijk, The Netherlands, Nov 200
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