Simulations of Dust in Interacting Galaxies

A new Monte-Carlo radiative-transfer code, Sunrise, is used to study the effects of dust in N-body/hydrodynamic simulations of interacting galaxies. Dust has a profound effect on the appearance of the simulated galaxies. At peak luminosities, about 90% of the bolometric luminosity is absorbed, and the dust obscuration scales with luminosity in such a way that the brightness at UV/visual wavelengths remains roughly constant. A general relationship between the fraction of energy absorbed and the ratio of bolometric luminosity to baryonic mass is found. Comparing to observations, the simulations are found to follow a relation similar to the observed IRX-Beta relation found by Meurer et al (1999) when similar luminosity objects are considered. The highest-luminosity simulated galaxies depart from this relation and occupy the region where local (U)LIRGs are found. This agreement is contingent on the presence of Milky-Way-like dust, while SMC-like dust results in far too red a UV continuum slope to match observations. The simulations are used to study the performance of star-formation indicators in the presence of dust. The far-infrared luminosity is found to be reliable. In contrast, the H-alpha and far-UV luminosity suffer severely from dust attenuation, and dust corrections can only partially remedy the situation.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the conference "The Spectral Energy Distribution of Gas-Rich Galaxies", eds. C.C. Popescu & R.J. Tuffs (Heidelberg, October 2004

A Correlation Between Hard Gamma-ray Sources and Cosmic Voids Along the Line of Sight

We estimate the galaxy density along lines of sight to hard extragalactic gamma-ray sources by correlating source positions on the sky with a void catalog based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Extragalactic gamma-ray sources that are detected at very high energy (VHE; E>100 GeV) or have been highlighted as VHE-emitting candidates in the Fermi Large Area Telescope hard source catalog (together referred to as "VHE-like" sources) are distributed along underdense lines of sight at the 2.4 sigma level. There is also a less suggestive correlation for the Fermi hard source population (1.7 sigma). A correlation between 10-500 GeV flux and underdense fraction along the line of sight for VHE-like and Fermi hard sources is found at 2.4 sigma and 2.6 sigma, respectively. The preference for underdense sight lines is not displayed by gamma-ray emitting galaxies within the second Fermi catalog, containing sources detected above 100 MeV, or the SDSS DR7 quasar catalog. We investigate whether this marginal correlation might be a result of lower extragalactic background light (EBL) photon density within the underdense regions and find that, even in the most extreme case of a entirely underdense sight line, the EBL photon density is only 2% less than the nominal EBL density. Translating this into gamma-ray attenuation along the line of sight for a highly attenuated source with opacity tau(E,z) ~5, we estimate that the attentuation of gamma-rays decreases no more than 10%. This decrease, although non-neglible, is unable to account for the apparent hard source correlation with underdense lines of sight.Comment: Accepted by MNRA

The Implications of Galaxy Formation Models for the TeV Observations of Current Detectors

This paper represents a step toward constraining galaxy formation models via TeV gamm a ray observations. We use semi-analytic models of galaxy formation to predict a spectral distribution for the intergalactic infrared photon field, which in turn yields information about the absorption of TeV gamma rays from extra-galactic sources. By making predictions for integral flux observations at >200 GeV for several known EGRE T sources, we directly compare our models with current observational upper limits obtained by Whipple. In addition, our predictions may offer a guide to the observing programs for the current population of TeV gamma ray observatories.Comment: 6 pages, 11 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the 6th TeV Workshop at Snowbird, U

No Indications of Axion-Like Particles From Fermi

As very high energy (~100 GeV) gamma rays travel over cosmological distances, their flux is attenuated through interactions with the extragalactic background light. Observations of distant gamma ray sources at energies between ~200 GeV and a few TeV by ground-based gamma ray telescopes such as HESS, however, suggest that the universe is more transparent to very high energy photons than had been anticipated. One possible explanation for this is the existence of axion-like-particles (ALPs) which gamma rays can efficiently oscillate into, enabling them to travel cosmological distances without attenuation. In this article, we use data from the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope to calculate the spectra at 1-100 GeV of two gamma ray sources, 1ES1101-232 at redshift z=0.186 and H2356-309 at z=0.165, and use this in conjunction with the measurements of ground-based telescopes to test the ALP hypothesis. We find that the observations can be well-fit by an intrinsic power-law source spectrum with indices of -1.72 and -2.1 for 1ES1101-232 and H2356-309, respectively, and that no ALPs or other exotic physics is necessary to explain the observed degree of attenuation.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures. v3: Matches published version, the analysis of H2356-309 is revised, no change in conclusion

Simulating multiple merger pathways to the central kinematics of early-type galaxies

Two-dimensional integral field surveys such as ATLAS^3D are producing rich observational data sets yielding insights into galaxy formation. These new kinematic observations have highlighted the need to understand the evolutionary mechanisms leading to a spectrum of fast-rotators and slow-rotators in early-type galaxies. We address the formation of slow and fast rotators through a series of controlled, comprehensive hydrodynamical simulations sampling idealized galaxy merger scenarios constructed from model spiral galaxies. Idealized and controlled simulations of this sort complement the more 'realistic' cosmological simulations by isolating and analyzing the effects of specific parameters, as we do in this paper. We recreate minor and major binary mergers, binary merger trees with multiple progenitors, and multiple sequential mergers. Within each of these categories of formation history, we correlate progenitor gas fraction, mass ratio, orbital pericenter, orbital ellipticity, and spin with remnant kinematic properties. We create kinematic profiles of these 95 simulations comparable to ATLAS^3D data. By constructing remnant profiles of the projected specific angular momentum (lambda_R = / , triaxiality, and measuring the incidences of kinematic twists and kinematically decoupled cores, we distinguish between varying formation scenarios. We find that binary mergers nearly always form fast rotators. Slow rotators can be formed from zero initial angular momentum configurations and gas-poor mergers, but are not as round as the ATLAS^3D galaxies. Remnants of binary merger trees are triaxial slow rotators. Sequential mergers form round slow rotators that most resemble the ATLAS^3D rotators.Comment: MNRAS, in press, 12 pages, 15 figure