381 research outputs found
The Multiple Timescales of Optical Variability of the Blazar 3C 279 During the 2001-2002 Outburst
During 2001-2002 the optically violent variable (OVV) blazar 3C 279 un-
derwent the most intense outburst seen during the entire fourteen year history
that this quasar has been studied at Colgate University's Foggy Bottom Obser-
vatory (FBO). This study concentrates on ~1600 R-filter images taken during
this period of activity. This data set includes twenty-nine nights of
microvari- ability coverage. The outburst began in March 2001, after 3C 279 had
faded to its faintest level, R = 15.5, in four years. The source reached its
brightest level, R = 12.5, in the fourteen years of our study in August 2001,
at which time it became unobservable due to its proximity to the Sun. Upon
becoming observable again in mid-December 2001, 3C 279 fluctuated between R =
13.9 and R = 14.7, until a dramatic decrease in flux level in June-July 2002
brought the source back down to a level comparable to its pre-outburst state.
The source exhibited numerous week-long flares of approximately one magnitude
during the outburst period. Superposed on these flares were night-to-night
variations of up to one half magnitude and intra-night microvariability of up
to 0.13 magnitude in three hours. We use visual inspection of the light curve
as well as numerical timescale analysis tools (the autocorrelation function,
the structure function, and the power spectrum) to characterize the multiple
timescales of variability ranging from 1.5 years to several hours.Comment: 44 pages, 21 figures, 3 tables Accepted for publication in the
Astronomical Journa
A Multiwavelength Study of a Sample of 70 Îźm Selected Galaxies in the COSMOS Field. II. The Role of Mergers in Galaxy Evolution
We analyze the morphological properties of a large sample of 1503 70 Îźm selected galaxies in the COSMOS field spanning the redshift range 0.01 10^(12) L_â) being up to ~50%. We also find that the fraction of spirals drops dramatically with L_(IR). Minor mergers likely play a role in boosting the infrared luminosity for sources with low luminosities (L_(IR) 1 being difficult to classify and subject to the effects of bandpass shifting; therefore, these numbers can only be considered lower limits. At z 1, the fraction of major mergers is lower, but is at least 30%-40% for ULIRGs. In a comparison of our visual classifications with several automated classification techniques we find general agreement; however, the fraction of identified mergers is underestimated due to automated classification methods being sensitive to only certain timescales of a major merger. Although the general morphological trends agree with what has been observed for local (U)LIRGs, the fraction of major mergers is slightly lower than seen locally. This is in part due to the difficulty of identifying merger signatures at high redshift. The distribution of the U â V color of the galaxies in our sample peaks in the green valley (= 1.1) with a large spread at bluer and redder colors and with the major mergers peaking more strongly in the green valley than the rest of the morphological classes. We argue that, given the number of major gas-rich mergers observed and the relatively short timescale that they would be observable in the (U)LIRG phase, it is plausible for the observed red sequence of massive ellipticals (<10^(12) M_â) to have been formed entirely by gas-rich major mergers
Major mergers are not significant drivers of star formation or morphological transformation around the epoch of peak cosmic star formation
We investigate the contribution of major mergers (mass ratios > 1:5) to stellar mass growth and morphological transformations around the epoch of peak cosmic star formation (z ~ 2). We visually classify a complete sample of massive (M > 1010M_) galaxies at this epoch, drawn from the CANDELS survey, into late-type galaxies, major mergers, spheroids and disturbed spheroids which show morphological disturbances. Given recent simulation work, which indicates that recent (<0.3-0.4 Gyr) major-merger remnants exhibit clear tidal features in such images, we use the fraction of disturbed spheroids to probe the role of major mergers in driving morphological transformations. The percentage of blue spheroids (i.e. with ongoing star formation) that show morphological disturbances is only 21 +- 4 per cent, indicating that major mergers are not the dominant mechanism for spheroid creation at z ~ 2 - other processes, such as minor mergers or cold accretion are likely to be the main drivers of this process. We also use the rest-frame U-band luminosity as a proxy for star formation to show that only a small fraction of the star formation budget (~3 per cent) is triggered by major mergers. Taken together, our results show that major mergers are not significant drivers of galaxy evolution at z ~ 2
A Survey of Atomic Carbon [C I] in High-redshift Main-Sequence Galaxies
We present the first results of an ALMA survey of the lower fine structure
line of atomic carbon [C I](^3P_1\,-\,^{3}P_0) in far infrared-selected
galaxies on the main sequence at in the COSMOS field. We compare our
sample with a comprehensive compilation of data available in the literature for
local and high-redshift starbursting systems and quasars. We show that the [C
I]() luminosity correlates on global scales with the
infrared luminosity similarly to low- CO transitions. We report
a systematic variation of L'_{\rm [C\,I]^3P_1\,-\, ^3P_0}/ as a
function of the galaxy type, with the ratio being larger for main-sequence
galaxies than for starbursts and sub-millimeter galaxies at fixed .
The L'_{\rm [C\,I]^3P_1\,-\, ^3P_0}/ and / mass ratios are similar for main-sequence galaxies and for
local and high-redshift starbursts within a 0.2 dex intrinsic scatter,
suggesting that [C I] is a good tracer of molecular gas mass as CO and dust. We
derive a fraction of %
of the total carbon mass in the atomic neutral phase. Moreover, we estimate the
neutral atomic carbon abundance, the fundamental ingredient to calibrate [C I]
as a gas tracer, by comparing L'_{\rm [C\,I]^3P_1\,-\, ^3P_0} and available
gas masses from CO lines and dust emission. We find lower [C I] abundances in
main-sequence galaxies than in starbursting systems and sub-millimeter
galaxies, as a consequence of the canonical and gas-to-dust
conversion factors. This argues against the application to different galaxy
populations of a universal standard [C I] abundance derived from highly biased
samples.Comment: 14 pages + Appendix. Accepted for publication in ApJ. All the data
tables in Appendix will be also released in electronic forma
The Bright and Dark Sides of High-Redshift starburst galaxies from {\it Herschel} and {\it Subaru} observations
We present rest-frame optical spectra from the FMOS-COSMOS survey of twelve
\textit{Herschel} starburst galaxies, with Star Formation Rate
(SFR) elevated by 8, on average, above the star-forming Main Sequence
(MS). Comparing the H to IR luminosity ratio and the Balmer Decrement
we find that the optically-thin regions of the sources contain on average only
percent of the total SFR whereas percent comes from an
extremely obscured component which is revealed only by far-IR observations and
is optically-thick even in H. We measure the [NII]/H
ratio, suggesting that the less obscured regions have a metal content similar
to that of the MS population at the same stellar masses and redshifts. However,
our objects appear to be metal-rich outliers from the metallicity-SFR
anticorrelation observed at fixed stellar mass for the MS population. The
[SII]/[SII] ratio from the average spectrum indicates an
electron density , larger than what
estimated for MS galaxies but only at the 1.5 level. Our results
provide supporting evidence that high- MS outliers are the analogous of
local ULIRGs, and are consistent with a major merger origin for the starburst
event.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, Accepted for publication in ApJ Letter
The DEIMOS 10k spectroscopic survey catalog of the COSMOS field
We present a catalog of 10718 objects in the COSMOS field observed through
multi-slit spectroscopy with the Deep Imaging Multi-Object Spectrograph
(DEIMOS) on the Keck II telescope in the wavelength range ~5500-9800A. The
catalog contains 6617 objects with high-quality spectra (two or more spectral
features), and 1798 objects with a single spectroscopic feature confirmed by
the photometric redshift. For 2024 typically faint objects we could not obtain
reliable redshifts. The objects have been selected from a variety of input
catalogs based on multi-wavelength observations in the field, and thus have a
diverse selection function, which enables the study of the diversity in the
galaxy population. The magnitude distribution of our objects is peaked at
I_AB~23 and K_AB~21, with a secondary peak at K_AB~24. We sample a broad
redshift distribution in the range 0<z<6, with one peak at z~1, and another one
around z~4. We have identified 13 redshift spikes at z>0.65 with chance
probabilities <4xE-4$, some of which are clearly related to protocluster
structures of sizes >10 Mpc. An object-to-object comparison with a multitude of
other spectroscopic samples in the same field shows that our DEIMOS sample is
among the best in terms of fraction of spectroscopic failures and relative
redshift accuracy. We have determined the fraction of spectroscopic blends to
about 0.8% in our sample. This is likely a lower limit and at any rate well
below the most pessimistic expectations. Interestingly, we find evidence for
strong lensing of Ly-alpha background emitters within the slits of 12 of our
target galaxies, increasing their apparent density by about a factor of 4.Comment: 28 pages, 11 figures and 5 tables. The full catalogue table is
available on http://cosmos.astro.caltech.edu. Accepted for publication in the
Astrophysical Journa
Rest-frame Optical Emission Lines in Far-Infrared Selected Galaxies at z<1.7 from the FMOS-COSMOS Survey
We have used FMOS on Subaru to obtain near-infrared spectroscopy of 123
far-infrared selected galaxies in COSMOS and obtain the key rest-frame optical
emission lines. This is the largest sample of infrared galaxies with
near-infrared spectroscopy at these redshifts. The far-infrared selection
results in a sample of galaxies that are massive systems that span a range of
metallicities in comparison with previous optically selected surveys, and thus
has a higher AGN fraction and better samples the AGN branch. We establish the
presence of AGN and starbursts in this sample of (U)LIRGs selected as
Herschel-PACS and Spitzer-MIPS detections in two redshift bins (z~0.7 and
z~1.5) and test the redshift dependence of diagnostics used to separate AGN
from star-formation dominated galaxies. In addition, we construct a low
redshift (z~0.1) comparison sample of infrared selected galaxies and find that
the evolution from z~1.5 to today is consistent with an evolving AGN selection
line and a range of ISM conditions and metallicities from the models of Kewley
et al. (2013b). We find that a large fraction of (U)LIRGs are BPT-selected AGN
using their new, redshift-dependent classification line. We compare the
position of known X-ray detected AGN (67 in total) with the BPT selection and
find that the new classification line accurately selects most of these objects
(> 70%). Furthermore, we identify 35 new (likely obscured) AGN not selected as
such by their X-ray emission. Our results have direct implications for AGN
selection at higher redshift with either current (MOSFIRE, KMOS) or future
(PFS, MOONS) spectroscopic efforts with near-infrared spectral coverage.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables. Accepted for publication in The
Astrophysical Journal Letter
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