1,366 research outputs found
Statistical Study of the Reconnection Rate in Solar Flares Observed with YOHKOH/SXT
We report a statistical study of flares observed with the Soft X-ray
Telescope (SXT) onboard Yohkoh in the year of 2000. We measure physical
parameters of 77 flares, such as the temporal scale, the size, and the magnetic
flux density and find that the sizes of flares tend to be distributed more
broadly as the GOES class becomes weaker and that there is a lower limit of
magnetic flux density that depends on the GOES class. We also examine the
relationship between these parameters and find weak correlation between
temporal and spatial scales of flares. We estimate reconnection inflow
velocity, coronal Alfven velocity, and reconnection rate using above observed
values. The inflow velocities are distributed from a few km/s to several tens
km/s and the Alfven velocities in the corona are in the range from 10^3 to 10^4
km/s. Hence the reconnection rate is 10^-3 - 10^-2. We find that the
reconnection rate in a flare tends to decrease as the GOES class of the flare
increases. This value is within one order of magnitude from the theoretical
maximum value predicted by the Petschek model, although the dependence of the
reconnection rate on the magnetic Reynolds number tends to be stronger than
that in the Petschek model.Comment: 21 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in Ap
Large-scale distributions of mid- and far-infrared emission from the center to the halo of M82 revealed with AKARI
The edge-on starburst galaxy M82 exhibits complicated distributions of
gaseous materials in its halo, which include ionized superwinds driven by
nuclear starbursts, neutral materials entrained by the superwinds, and
large-scale neutral streamers probably caused by a past tidal interaction with
M81. We investigate detailed distributions of dust grains and polycyclic
aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) around M82 to understand their interplay with the
gaseous components. We performed mid- (MIR) and far-infrared (FIR) observations
of M82 with the Infrared Camera and Far-Infrared Surveyor on board AKARI. We
obtain new MIR and FIR images of M82, which reveal both faint extended emission
in the halo and very bright emission in the center with signal dynamic ranges
as large as five and three orders of magnitude for the MIR and FIR,
respectively. We detect MIR and FIR emission in the regions far away from the
disk of the galaxy, reflecting the presence of dust and PAHs in the halo of
M82. We find that the dust and PAHs are contained in both ionized and neutral
gas components, implying that they have been expelled into the halo of M82 by
both starbursts and galaxy interaction. In particular, we obtain a tight
correlation between the PAH and H emission, which provides evidence
that the PAHs are well mixed in the ionized superwind gas and outflowing from
the disk.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in A&
Development of Fine Resolution Computer Tomography Using Multi-channel Visible Spectroscopic System
Galactic Wind Signatures around High Redshift Galaxies
We carry out cosmological chemodynamical simulations with different strengths
of supernova (SN) feedback and study how galactic winds from star-forming
galaxies affect the features of hydrogen (HI) and metal (CIV and OVI)
absorption systems in the intergalactic medium at high redshift. We find that
the outflows tend to escape to low density regions, and hardly affect the dense
filaments visible in HI absorption. As a result, the strength of HI absorption
near galaxies is not reduced by galactic winds, but even slightly increases. We
also find that a lack of HI absorption for lines of sight (LOS) close to
galaxies, as found by Adelberger et al., can be created by hot gas around the
galaxies induced by accretion shock heating. In contrast to HI, metal
absorption systems are sensitive to the presence of winds. The models without
feedback can produce the strong CIV and OVI absorption lines in LOS within 50
kpc from galaxies, while strong SN feedback is capable of creating strong CIV
and OVI lines out to about twice that distance. We also analyze the mean
transmissivity of HI, CIV, and OVI within 1 h Mpc from star-forming
galaxies. The probability distribution of the transmissivity of HI is
independent of the strength of SN feedback, but strong feedback produces LOS
with lower transmissivity of metal lines. Additionally, strong feedback can
produce strong OVI lines even in cases where HI absorption is weak. We conclude
that OVI is probably the best tracer for galactic winds at high redshift.Comment: 16 pages, 16 figures, ApJ in press. Higher resolution version
available at http://www.ociw.edu/~dkawata/research/papers.htm
Detection of Polarized Broad Emission in the Seyfert 2 Galaxy Mrk 573
We report the discovery of the scattered emission from a hidden broad-line
region (BLR) in a Seyfert 2 galaxy, Mrk 573, based on our recent
spectropolarimetric observation performed at the Subaru Telescope. This object
has been regarded as a type 2 AGN without a hidden BLR by the previous
observations. However, our high quality spectrum of the polarized flux of Mrk
573 shows prominent broad (~3000 km/s) H_alpha emission, broad weak H_beta
emission, and subtle Fe II multiplet emission. Our new detection of these
indications for the presence of the hidden BLR in the nucleus of Mrk 573 is
thought to be owing to the high signal-to-noise ratio of our data, but the
possibility of a time variation of the scattered BLR emission is also
mentioned. Some diagnostic quantities such as the IRAS color, the radio power,
and the line ratio of the emission from the narrow-line region of Mrk 573 are
consistent with the distributions of such quantities of type 2 AGNs with a
hidden BLR. Mrk 573 is thought to be an object whose level of the AGN activity
is the weakest among the type 2 AGNs with a hidden BLR. In terms of the
systematic differences between the type 2 AGNs with and without a hidden BLR,
we briefly comment on an interesting Seyfert 2 galaxy, Mrk 266SW, which may
possess a hidden BLR but has been treated as a type 2 AGNs without a hidden
BLR.Comment: 9 pages including 6 figures, to appear in The Astronomical Journa
The ALMA Discovery of the Rotating Disk and Fast Outflow of Cold Molecular Gas in NGC 1275
We present ALMA Band 6 observations of the CO(2-1), HCN(3-2), and
HCO(3-2) lines in the nearby radio galaxy / brightest cluster galaxy
(BCG) of NGC 1275 with the spatial resolution of pc. In the previous
observations, CO(2-1) emission was detected as radial filaments lying in the
east-west direction. We resolved the inner filament and found that the filament
cannot be represented by a simple infalling stream both morphologically and
kinematically. The observed complex nature of the filament resembles the cold
gas structure predicted by recent numerical simulations of cold chaotic
accretion. A crude estimate suggests that the accretion rate of the cold gas
can be higher than that of hot gas. Within the central 100 pc, we detected a
rotational disk of the molecular gas whose mass is \sim10^{8} M_{\sun}. This
is the first evidence of the presence of massive cold gas disk on this spatial
scale for BCGs. The disk rotation axis is approximately consistent with the
axis of the radio jet on subpc scales. This probably suggests that the cold gas
disk is physically connected to the innermost accretion disk which is
responsible for jet launching. We also detected absorption features in the
HCN(3-2) and HCO(3-2) spectra against the radio continuum emission mostly
radiated by -pc size jet. The absorption features are blue-shifted
from the systemic velocity by 300-600~km~s, which suggests the
presence of outflowing gas from the active galactic nucleus (AGN). We discuss
the relation of the AGN feeding with cold accretion, the origin of blue-shifted
absorption, and estimate of black hole mass using the molecular gas dynamics.Comment: Version 2 (accepted version). 18 pages, 16 figures. Accepted for
publication in Ap
A New Superwind Wolf-Rayet Galaxy Mrk 1259
We report the discovery of a starburst-driven wind (superwind) from the
starburst nucleus galaxy Mrk 1259. The estimated number ratio of Wolf-Rayet
(WR) to O stars amounts to ~0.09. While the nuclear emission-line region is due
to usual photoionization by massive stars, the circumnuclear emission-line
regions show anomalous line ratios that can be due to cooling shocks. Since the
host galaxy seems to be a face-on disk galaxy and the excitation conditions of
the circumnuclear emission-line regions show the spatial symmetry, we consider
that we are seeing the superwind nearly from a pole-on view. Cooling shock
models may explain the observed emission line ratios of the circumnuclear
regions although a factor of 2 overabundance of nitrogen is necessary. All
these suggest that the high-mass enhanced starburst occurred ~5X10^6 years ago
in the nuclear region of Mrk 1259.Comment: To be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, 15 pages, 4
figure
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