4,427 research outputs found
Beware of fake AGNs
In the BPT diagram, the distribution of the emission-line galaxies from the
Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) evokes the wings of a seagull. Traditionally,
galaxies in the right wing are considered to host AGNs. Our study of the
stellar populations of SDSS galaxies showed that about1/4 of galaxies thought
to host LINERS are in fact "retired galaxies", i.e. galaxies that stopped
forming stars and are ionized by hot post-AGB stars and white dwarfs (Stasinska
et al. 2008). When including the galaxies that lack some of the lines needed to
place them in the BPT diagram the fraction of retired galaxies is even larger
(Cid Fernandes et al., 2009, arXiv:0912.1376)Comment: to be published in "Co-evolution of central black holes and galaxies:
feeding and feed-back" Proceedings IAU Symposium No. 267, Peterson, Rachel
Somerville, & Thaisa Storchi-Bergmann ed
BOND: Bayesian Oxygen and Nitrogen abundance Determinations in giant H II regions using strong and semi-strong lines
We present BOND, a Bayesian code to simultaneously derive oxygen and nitrogen
abundances in giant H II regions. It compares observed emission lines to a grid
of photoionization models without assuming any relation between O/H and N/O.
Our grid spans a wide range in O/H, N/O and ionization parameter U, and covers
different starburst ages and nebular geometries. Varying starburst ages
accounts for variations in the ionizing radiation field hardness, which arise
due to the ageing of H II regions or the stochastic sampling of the initial
mass function. All previous approaches assume a strict relation between the
ionizing field and metallicity. The other novelty is extracting information on
the nebular physics from semi-strong emission lines. While strong lines ratios
alone ([O III]/Hbeta, [O II]/Hbeta and [N II]/Hbeta) lead to multiple O/H
solutions, the simultaneous use of [Ar III]/[Ne III] allows one to decide
whether an H II region is of high or low metallicity. Adding He I/Hbeta pins
down the hardness of the radiation field. We apply our method to H II regions
and blue compact dwarf galaxies, and find that the resulting N/O vs O/H
relation is as scattered as the one obtained from the temperature-based method.
As in previous strong-line methods calibrated on photoionization models, the
BOND O/H values are generally higher than temperature-based ones, which might
indicate the presence of temperature fluctuations or kappa distributions in
real nebulae, or a too soft ionizing radiation field in the models.Comment: MNRAS in press; 21 pages, 22 figures, 2 tables; code, data and
results available at http://bond.ufsc.b
A comprehensive classification of galaxies in the SDSS: How to tell true from fake AGN?
We use the W_Ha versus [NII]/Ha (WHAN) diagram to provide a comprehensive
emission-line classification of SDSS galaxies. This classification is able to
cope with the large population of weak line galaxies that do not appear in
traditional diagrams due to a lack of some of the diagnostic lines. A further
advantage of the WHAN diagram is to allow the differentiation between two very
distinct classes that overlap in the LINER region of traditional diagnostic
diagrams. These are galaxies hosting a weakly active nucleus (wAGN) and
"retired galaxies" (RGs), i.e. galaxies that have stopped forming stars and are
ionized by their hot evolved low-mass stars. A useful criterion to distinguish
true from fake AGN (i.e. the RGs) is the ratio (\xi) of the
extinction-corrected L_Ha with respect to the Ha luminosity expected from
photoionization by stellar populations older than 100 Myr. This ratio follows a
markedly bimodal distribution, with a \xi >> 1 population composed by systems
undergoing star-formation and/or nuclear activity, and a peak at \xi ~ 1
corresponding to the prediction of the RG model. We base our classification
scheme on the equivalent width of Ha, an excellent observational proxy for \xi.
Based on the bimodal distribution of W_Ha, we set the division between wAGN and
RGs at W_Ha = 3 A. Five classes of galaxies are identified within the WHAN
diagram: (a) Pure star forming galaxies: log [NII]/Ha 3 A.
(b) Strong AGN (i.e., Seyferts): log [NII]/Ha > -0.4 and W_Ha > 6 A. (c) Weak
AGN: log [NII]/Ha > -0.4 and W_Ha between 3 and 6 A. (d) RGs: W_Ha < 3 A. (e)
Passive galaxies (actually, line-less galaxies): W_Ha and W_[NII] < 0.5 A. A
comparative analysis of star formation histories and of other properties in
these different classes of galaxies corroborates our proposed differentiation
between RGs and weak AGN in the LINER-like family. (Abridged)Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRA
Nou sistema senzill i exacte per a reproduir grĂ ficament l'estructura de les ales dels insectes
Peer Reviewe
Effects of an extra gauge boson on the top quark decay
The effects of an extra gauge boson with family nonuniversal fermion
couplings on the rare top quark decay gamma10^{-8}m_{Z'}=500Z'B(t --> c
\gamma)\sim 10^{-6}m_{Z'}=1$ TeV.Comment: New paragraphs included to clarify our results, conclusion remains
unchange
Semi-empirical analysis of Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies III. How to distinguish AGN hosts
We consider the techniques to distinguish normal star forming (NSF) galaxies
and active galactic nuclei (AGN) hosts using optical spectra. The observational
data base is a set of 20000 galaxies extracted from the Sloan Digital Sky
Survey, for which we have determined the emission line intensities after
subtracting the stellar continuum obtained from spectral synthesis. Our
analysis is based on photoionization models computed using the stellar ionizing
radiation predicted by Starburst 99 and, for the AGNs, a broken power-law
spectrum. We explain why, among the four classical emission line diagnostic
diagrams, the [OIII]/Hb vs [NII]/Ha one works best. We show however, that none
of these diagrams is efficient in detecting AGNs in metal poor galaxies, should
such cases exist. We propose a new divisory line between ``pure'' NSF galaxies
and AGN hosts. We also show that a classification into NSF and AGN galaxies
using only [NII]/Ha is feasible and useful. Finally, we propose a new
classification diagram, the DEW diagram, plotting D_n(4000) vs
max(EW[OII],EW[NeIII]). This diagram can be used with optical spectra for
galaxies with redshifts up to z = 1.3, meaning an important progress over
classifications proposed up to now. Since the DEW diagram requires only a small
range in wavelength, it can also be used at even larger redshifts in suitable
atmospheric windows. It also has the advantage of not requiring stellar
synthesis analysis to subtract the stars and of allowing one to see ALL the
galaxies in the same diagram, including passive galaxies.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS (replaced on
august 3, 2006, eqs 6 and 7 corrected
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