Chandra Observations and the Nature of the Anomalous Arms of NGC 4258 (M 106)

This paper presents high resolution X-ray observations with Chandra of NGC 4258 and infers the nature of the so called ``anomalous arms'' in this galaxy. The anomalous arms dominate the X-ray image; diffuse X-ray emission from the ``plateaux'' regions, seen in radio and H$\alpha$ imaging, is also found. X-ray spectra have been obtained at various locations along the anomalous arms and are well described by thermal (mekal) models with kT in the range 0.37 - 0.6 keV. The previously known kpc-scale radio jets are surrounded by cocoons of hot X-ray emitting gas for the first 350 pc of their length. The radio jets, seen in previous VLBA and VLA observations, propagate perpendicular to the compact nuclear gas disk (imaged in water vapor maser emission). The angle between the jets and the rotation axis of the galactic disk is 60$^{\circ}$. The jets shock the normal interstellar gas along the first 350 pc of their length, causing the hot, X-ray emitting cocoons noted above. At a height of z = 175 pc from the disk plane, the jets exit the normal gas disk and then propagate though the low density halo until they reach ``hot spots'' (at 870 pc and 1.7 kpc from the nucleus), which are seen in radio, optical line and X-ray emission. These jets must drive mass motions into the low density halo gas. This high velocity halo gas impacts on the dense galactic gas disk and shock heats it along and around a ``line of damage'', which is the projection of the jets onto the galactic gas disk as viewed down the galaxy disk rotation axis. However, because NGC 4258 is highly inclined ($i$ = 64$^{\circ}$), the ``line of damage'' projects on the sky in a different direction to the jets themselves. We calculate the expected p.a. of the ``line of damage'' on the sky and find that it coincides with the anomalous arms to within 2$^{\circ}$. (Abstract truncated).Comment: 12 pages plus 9 figures, to be published in the Astrophysical Journal, v560, nr 1, pt 1 (Oct 10, 2001 issue

The scale-free character of the cluster mass function and the universality of the stellar IMF

Our recent determination of a Salpeter slope for the IMF in the field of 30 Doradus (Selman and Melnick 2005) appears to be in conflict with simple probabilistic counting arguments advanced in the past to support observational claims of a steeper IMF in the LMC field. In this paper we re-examine these arguments and show by explicit construction that, contrary to these claims, the field IMF is expected to be exactly the same as the stellar IMF of the clusters out of which the field was presumably formed. We show that the current data on the mass distribution of clusters themselves is in excellent agreement with our model, and is consistent with a single spectrum {\it by number of stars} of the type $n^\beta$ with beta between -1.8 and -2.2 down to the smallest clusters without any preferred mass scale for cluster formation. We also use the random sampling model to estimate the statistics of the maximal mass star in clusters, and confirm the discrepancy with observations found by Weidner and Kroupa (2006). We argue that rather than signaling the violation of the random sampling model these observations reflect the gravitationally unstable nature of systems with one very large mass star. We stress the importance of the random sampling model as a \emph{null hypothesis} whose violation would signal the presence of interesting physics.Comment: 9 pages emulateap

3D Radiative Hydrodynamics for Disk Stability Simulations: A Proposed Testing Standard and New Results

Recent three-dimensional radiative hydrodynamics simulations of protoplanetary disks report disparate disk behaviors, and these differences involve the importance of convection to disk cooling, the dependence of disk cooling on metallicity, and the stability of disks against fragmentation and clump formation. To guarantee trustworthy results, a radiative physics algorithm must demonstrate the capability to handle both the high and low optical depth regimes. We develop a test suite that can be used to demonstrate an algorithm's ability to relax to known analytic flux and temperature distributions, to follow a contracting slab, and to inhibit or permit convection appropriately. We then show that the radiative algorithm employed by Meji\'a (2004) and Boley et al. (2006) and the algorithm employed by Cai et al. (2006) and Cai et al. (2007, in prep.) pass these tests with reasonable accuracy. In addition, we discuss a new algorithm that couples flux-limited diffusion with vertical rays, we apply the test suite, and we discuss the results of evolving the Boley et al. (2006) disk with this new routine. Although the outcome is significantly different in detail with the new algorithm, we obtain the same qualitative answers. Our disk does not cool fast due to convection, and it is stable to fragmentation. We find an effective $\alpha\approx 10^{-2}$. In addition, transport is dominated by low-order modes.Comment: Submitted to Ap

The internal structure and formation of early-type galaxies: the gravitational--lens system MG2016+112 at z=1.004

[Abridged] We combine our measurements of the velocity dispersion and the surface brightness profile of the lens galaxy D in the system MG2016+112 (z=1.004) with constraints from gravitational lensing to study its internal mass distribution. We find that: (i) dark matter accounts for >50% of the total mass within the Einstein radius (99% CL), excluding at the 8-sigma level that mass follows light inside the Einstein radius with a constant mass-to-light ratio (M/L). (ii) the total mass distribution inside the Einstein radius is well-described by a density profile ~r^-gamma' with an effective slope gamma'=2.0+-0.1+-0.1, including random and systematic uncertainties. (iii) The offset of galaxy D from the local Fundamental Plane independently constrains the stellar M/L, and matches the range derived from our models, leading to a more stringent lower limit of >60% on the fraction of dark matter within the Einstein radius (99%CL). Under the assumption of adiabatic contraction, the inner slope of the dark matter halo before the baryons collapsed is gamma_i<1.4 (68 CL), marginally consistent with the highest-resolution cold dark matter simulations that indicate gamma_i~1.5. This might indicate that either adiabatic contraction is a poor description of E/S0 formation or that additional processes play a role as well. Indeed, the apparently isothermal density distribution inside the Einstein radius, is not a natural outcome of adiabatic contraction models, where it appears to be a mere coincidence. By contrast, we argue that isothermality might be the result of a stronger coupling between luminous and dark-matter, possibly the result of (incomplete) violent relaxation processes. Hence, we conclude that galaxy D appears already relaxed 8 Gyr ago.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, ApJ, in press, minor change

Comment on Viscous Stability of Relativistic Keplerian Accretion Disks

Recently Ghosh (1998) reported a new regime of instability in Keplerian accretion disks which is caused by relativistic effects. This instability appears in the gas pressure dominated region when all relativistic corrections to the disk structure equations are taken into account. We show that he uses the stability criterion in completely wrong way leading to inappropriate conclusions. We perform a standard stability analysis to show that no unstable region can be found when the relativistic disk is gas pressure dominated.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, uses aasms4.sty, submitted for ApJ Letter

Bar Diagnostics in Edge-On Spiral Galaxies. II. Hydrodynamical Simulations

We develop diagnostics based on gas kinematics to identify the presence of a bar in an edge-on spiral galaxy and determine its orientation. We use position-velocity diagrams (PVDs) obtained by projecting edge-on two-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations of the gas flow in a barred galaxy potential. We show that when a nuclear spiral is formed, the presence of a gap in the PVDs, between the signature of the nuclear spiral and that of the outer parts of the disk, reliably indicates the presence of a bar. This gap is due to the presence of shocks and inflows in the simulations, leading to a depletion of the gas in the outer bar region. If no nuclear spiral signature is present in a PVD, only indirect arguments can be used to argue for the presence of a bar. The shape of the signature of the nuclear spiral, and to a lesser extent that of the outer bar region, allows to determine the orientation of the bar with respect to the line-of-sight. The presence of dust can also help to discriminate between viewing angles on either side of the bar. Simulations covering a large fraction of parameter space constrain the bar properties and mass distribution of observed galaxies. The strongest constraint comes from the presence or absence of the signature of a nuclear spiral in the PVD.Comment: 25 pages (AASTeX, aaspp4.sty), 11 jpg figures. Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. Online manuscript with PostScript figures available at: http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/~bureau/pub_list.htm

The Structure and Dynamics of Luminous and Dark Matter in the Early-Type Lens Galaxy of 0047-281 at z=0.485

We have measured the kinematic profile of the early-type (E/S0) lens galaxy in the system 0047-281 (z=0.485) with the {\sl Echelle Spectrograph and Imager} (ESI) on the W.M. Keck--II Telescope, as part of the {\sl Lenses Structure and Dynamics (LSD) Survey}. The central velocity dispersion is \sigma=229\pm 15 \kms, and the dispersion profile is nearly flat to beyond one effective radius (R_e). Surface photometry of the lens galaxy is measured from {\sl Hubble Space Telescope} images. From the offset from the local Fundamental Plane (FP), we measure an evolution of the effective mass-to-light ratio of \Delta \log M/L_B=-0.37\pm0.06 between z=0 and z=0.485, consistent with the observed evolution of field E/S0 galaxies. (We assume h_{65}=1,\Omega_{\rm m}=0.3 and \Omega_\Lambda=0.7 throughout.) Gravitational lens models provide a mass of M_{\rmE}=(4.06\pm0.20)\times 10^{11} h_{65}^{-1}M_\odot inside the Einstein radius of R_{\rm E}=(8.70\pm0.07) h_{65}^{-1} kpc. This allows us to break the degeneracy between velocity anisotropy and density profile, typical of dynamical models for E/S0 galaxies. We find that constant M/L model, even with strongly tangential anisotropy of the stellar velocity ellipsoid, are excluded at >99.9%CL. The total mass distribution inside R_{\rm E} can be described by a single power-law density profile, \rho_t\propto r^{-\gamma'}, with an effective slope \gamma'=1.90^{+0.05}_{-0.23} (68%CL; \pm0.1 systematic error). Two-component models yield an upper limit (68% CL) of \gamma\le 1.55(1.12) on the power-law slope of the dark-matter density profile and a projected dark-matter mass fraction of 0.41(0.54)^{+0.15}_{-0.05}(^{+0.09}_{-0.06}) (68% CL) inside R_{\rm E}, for Osipkov--Merritt models with anisotropy radius r_i=\infty(R_e).Comment: 9 pages, ApJ, in press. Minor changes, conlusion unchange

Forming Galaxies with MOND

Beginning with a simple model for the growth of structure, I consider the dissipationless evolution of a MOND-dominated region in an expanding Universe by means of a spherically symmetric N-body code. I demonstrate that the final virialized objects resemble elliptical galaxies with well-defined relationships between the mass, radius, and velocity dispersion. These calculations suggest that, in the context of MOND, massive elliptical galaxies may be formed early (z > 10) as a result of monolithic dissipationless collapse. Then I reconsider the classic argument that a galaxy of stars results from cooling and fragmentation of a gas cloud on a time scale shorter than that of dynamical collapse. Qualitatively, the results are similar to that of the traditional picture; moreover, the existence, in MOND, of a density-temperature relation for virialized, near isothermal objects as well as a mass-temperature relation implies that there is a definite limit to the mass of a gas cloud where this condition can be met-- an upper limit corresponding to that of presently observed massive galaxies.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, revised in response to comments of referee. Table added, extended discussion, accepted MNRA