A VLBA Search for a Stimulated Recombination Line from the Accretion Region in NGC1275

The radio source 3C84, in NGC1275, has a two sided structure on parsec scales. The northern feature, presumed to be associated with a jet moving away from the Earth, shows strong evidence for free-free absorption. The ionized gas responsible for that absorption would be a source of detectable stimulated recombination line emission for a wide range of physical conditions. The VLBA has been used to search for the H65$\alpha$ hydrogen recombination line. The line is only expected to be seen against the northern feature which contains a small fraction of the total radio flux density. This spatial discrimination significantly aids the search for a weak line. No line was seen, with upper limits of roughly 15% of the continuum over a velocity range of 1486 km/s with resolutions up to 6.6 km/s. In the absence of a strong radiation field, this would imply that the free-free absorbing gas has a wide velocity width, is moving rapidly relative to the systemic velocity, or is concentrated in a thin, high density structure. All of these possibilities are reasonably likely close to an AGN. However, in the intense radiation environment of the AGN, even considering only the radiation we actually observe passing through the free-free absorbing gas, the non-detection is probably assured by a combination of saturation and radiation damping.Comment: 14 pages with 4 postscript figures. Accepted for publication in the April 2003 Astronomical Journa

Spectroscopy of the optical Einstein ring 0047-2808

We present optical and near-infrared spectroscopic observations of the optical Einstein ring 0047-2808. We detect both [OIII] lines 4959, 5007 near 2.3 micron, confirming the redshift of the lensed source as z=3.595. The Ly-a line is redshifted relative to the [OIII] line by 140+-20 km/s. Similar velocity shifts have been seen in nearby starburst galaxies. The [OIII] line is very narrow, 130 km/s FWHM. If the ring is the image of the centre of a galaxy the one-dimensional stellar velocity dispersion sigma=55 km/s is considerably smaller than the value predicted by Baugh et al. (1998) for the somewhat brighter Lyman-break galaxies. The Ly-a line is significantly broader than the [OIII] line, probably due to resonant scattering. The stellar central velocity dispersion of the early-type deflector galaxy at z=0.485 is 250+-30 km/s. This value is in good agreement both with the value predicted from the radius of the Einstein ring (and a singular isothermal sphere model for the deflector), and the value estimated from the D_n-sigma relation.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Probing High Redshift Radiation Fields with Gamma-Ray Absorption

The next generation of gamma-ray telescopes may be able to observe gamma-ray blazars at high redshift, possibly out to the epoch of reionization. The spectrum of such sources should exhibit an absorption edge due to pair-production against UV photons along the line of sight. One expects a sharp drop in the number density of UV photons at the Lyman edge E_{L}. This implies that the universe becomes transparent after gamma-ray photons redshift below E (m_{e}c^2)^{2}/E_{L} 18 GeV. Thus, there is only a limited redshift interval over which GeV photons can pair produce. This implies that any observed absorption will probe radiation fields in the very early universe, regardless of the subsequent star formation history of the universe. Furthermore, measurements of differential absorption between blazars at different redshifts can cleanly isolate the opacity due to UV emissivity at high redshift. An observable absorption edge should be present for most reasonable radiation fields with sufficient energy to reionize the universe. Ly-alpha photons may provide an important component of the pair-production opacity. Observations of a number of blazars at different redshifts will thus allow us to probe the rise in comoving UV emissivity with time.Comment: ApJ accepted version, minor changes. 19 pages, 5 figure

Modifications to the Cosmic 21-cm Background Frequency Spectrum by Scattering via electrons in Galaxy Clusters

The cosmic 21-cm background frequency spectrum related to the spin-flip transition of neutral Hydrogen present during and before the era of reionization is rich in features associated with physical processes that govern transitions between the two spin states. The intervening electrons in foreground galaxy clusters inversely Compton scatter the 21-cm background spectrum and modify it just as the cosmic microwave background (CMB) spectrum is modified by inverse-Compton scattering. Towards typical galaxy clusters at low redshifts, the resulting modification is a few tenths milli-Kelvin correction to the few tens milli-Kelvin temperature of 21-cm signal relative to that of the cosmic microwave background black body spectrum. The modifications are mostly associated with sharp changes in the cosmic 21-cm background spectrum such as due to the onset of a Lyman-$\alpha$ radiation field or heating of neutral gas. Though low frequency radio interferometers that are now planned for 21-cm anisotropy measurements are insensitive to the mean 21-cm spectrum, differential observations of galaxy clusters with these interferometers can be utilized to indirectly establish global features in the 21-cm frequency spectrum. We discuss the feasibility to detect the spectrum modified by clusters and find that for upcoming interferometers, while a detection towards an individual cluster is challenging, one can average signals over a number of clusters, selected based on the strength of the Sunyave-Zel'dovich effect at high radio frequencies involving CMB scattering alone, to establish the mean 21-cm spectrum.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, PRD in press; expanded and title changed from v1. Final version in pres

Discovery of distant high luminosity infrared galaxies

We have developed a method for selecting the most luminous galaxies detected by IRAS based on their extreme values of R, the ratio of 60 micron and B-band luminosity. These objects have optical counterparts that are close to or below the limits of Schmidt surveys. We have tested our method on a 1079 deg^2 region of sky, where we have selected a sample of IRAS sources with 60 micron flux densities greater than 0.2 Jy, corresponding to a redshift limit z~1 for objects with far-IR luminosities of 10^{13} L_sun. Optical identifications for these were obtained from the UK Schmidt Telescope plates, using the likelihood ratio method. Optical spectroscopy has been carried out to reliably identify and measure the redshifts of six objects with very faint optical counterparts, which are the only objects with R>100 in the sample. One object is a hyperluminous infrared galaxy (HyLIG) at z=0.834. Of the remaining, fainter objects, five are ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIGs) with a mean redshift of 0.45, higher than the highest known redshift of any non-hyperluminous ULIG prior to this study. High excitation lines reveal the presence of an active nucleus in the HyLIG, just as in the other known infrared-selected HyLIGs. In contrast, no high excitation lines are found in the non-hyperluminous ULIGs. We discuss the implications of our results for the number density of HyLIGs at z<1 and for the evolution of the infrared galaxy population out to this redshift, and show that substantial evolution is indicated. Our selection method is robust against the presence of gravitational lensing if the optical and infrared magnification factors are similar, and we suggest a way of using it to select candidate gravitationally lensed infrared galaxies.Comment: 6 pages, accepted for publication in A&

The Keck/OSIRIS Nearby AGN Survey (KONA) I. The Nuclear K-band Properties of Nearby AGN

We introduce the Keck Osiris Nearby AGN survey (KONA), a new adaptive optics-assisted integral-field spectroscopic survey of Seyfert galaxies. KONA permits at ~0.1" resolution a detailed study of the nuclear kinematic structure of gas and stars in a representative sample of 40 local bona fide active galactic nucleus (AGN). KONA seeks to characterize the physical processes responsible for the coevolution of supermassive black holes and galaxies, principally inflows and outflows. With these IFU data of the nuclear regions of 40 Seyfert galaxies, the KONA survey will be able to study, for the first time, a number of key topics with meaningful statistics. In this paper we study the nuclear K-band properties of nearby AGN. We find that the luminosities of the unresolved Seyfert 1 sources at 2.1 microns are correlated with the hard X-ray luminosities, implying that the majority of the emission is non-stellar. The best-fit correlation is logLK = 0.9logL2-10 keV + 4 over 3 orders of magnitude in both K-band and X-ray luminosities. We find no strong correlation between 2.1 microns luminosity and hard X-ray luminosity for the Seyfert 2 galaxies. The spatial extent and spectral slope of the Seyfert 2 galaxies indicate the presence of nuclear star formation and attenuating material (gas and dust), which in some cases is compact and in some galaxies extended. We detect coronal-line emission in 36 galaxies and for the first time in five galaxies. Finally, we find 4/20 galaxies that are optically classified as Seyfert 2 show broad emission lines in the near-IR, and one galaxy (NGC 7465) shows evidence of a double nucleus.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ, 19 pages with 18 figure