The X-ray/UV ratio in Active Galactic Nuclei: dispersion and variability

The relation between the $\alpha_{OX}$ index and the optical/UV luminosity ($L_{UV}$), a by product of the X-ray - optical/UV luminosity relation, is affected by a relatively large dispersion, due to variability in the $\alpha_{OX}$ within single sources (intra-source dispersion) and variations of fundamental physical parameters from source to source (inter-source dispersion). We use archival data from the XMMSSC and from the XMMOM-SUSS3. We select a sub-sample in order to decrease the dispersion of the relation due to the presence of Radio-Loud and Broad Absorption Line objects, and to absorptions in both X-ray and optical/UV bands. We analyse the dependence of the residuals of the relation on various physical parameters in order to characterise the inter-source dispersion. We find a total dispersion of ~0.12 and, using the Structure Function, we find that intrinsic variability contributes for 56% of the variance of the relation. We find weak but significant dependences of the residuals of the relation on black-hole (BH) mass and on Eddington ratio, confirmed by a multivariate regression analysis of $\alpha_{OX}$ as a function of optical/UV luminosity and the above quantities. We find a weak positive correlation of both the $\alpha_{OX}$ and the residuals of the relation with inclination indicators (FWHM(H$\beta$) and EW[O$_{III}$]) suggesting a weak increase of X-ray/UV ratio with the viewing angle. Our results suggest the possibility of selecting a sample of objects, based on their viewing angle and/or BH mass and Eddington ratio, for which the $\alpha_{OX}-L_{UV}$ relation is as tight as possible, in light of the use of the X-ray - optical/UV luminosity relation to build a distance modulus (DM) - $z$ plane and estimate cosmological parameters.Comment: accepted for publication in A&

A multi-wavelength study of the gravitational lens COSMOS J095930+023427

We present a multi-wavelength study of the gravitational lens COSMOS J095930+023427 (z=0.89), together with the associated galaxy group located at $z\sim0.7$ along the line of sight and the lensed background galaxy. The source redshift is currently unknown, but estimated to be at $z_s \sim 2$. The analysis is based on the available public HST, Subaru, Chandra imaging data, and VLT spectroscopy. The lensing system is an early-type galaxy showing a strong [OII] emission line, and produces 4 bright images of the distant background source. It has an Einstein radius of 0.79", about 4 times large than the effective radius. We perform a lensing analysis using both a Singular Isothermal Ellipsoid (SIE) and a Peudo-Isothermal Elliptical Mass Distribution (PIEMD) for the lensing galaxy, and find that the final results on the total mass, the dark matter (DM) fraction within the Einstein radius and the external shear due to a foreground galaxy group are robust with respect of the choice of the parametric model and the source redshift (yet unknown). We measure the luminous mass from the photometric data, and find the DM fraction within the Einstein radius $f_{\rm DM}$ to be between $0.71\pm 0.13$ and $0.79 \pm 0.15$, depending on the unknown source redshift. Meanwhile, the non-null external shear found in our lensing models supports the presence and structure of a galaxy group at $z\sim0.7$, and an independent measurement of the 0.5-2 keV X-ray luminosity within 20" around the X-ray centroid provides a group mass of $M=(3-10)\times 10^{13}$ M$_{\odot}$, in good agreement with the previous estimate derived through weak lensing analysis.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure

Il Daoismo e la virata ambientalista cinese

L'articolo analizza la recente tendenza, favorita sia dalle istituzioni cinesi che da alcune influenti organizzazioni internazionali, a utilizzare la tradizione del Daoismo nel quadro della difesa dei valori dell'ambientalismo. Le fonti tradizionali mostrano con evidenza come tale fenomenologia, più che riflettere un ipotetico e anacronistico "ambientalismo daoista" originario, sia frutto di una confluenza di interessi appartenenti in toto alla contemporaneità

Astrophysical Data Analytics based on Neural Gas Models, using the Classification of Globular Clusters as Playground

In Astrophysics, the identification of candidate Globular Clusters through deep, wide-field, single band HST images, is a typical data analytics problem, where methods based on Machine Learning have revealed a high efficiency and reliability, demonstrating the capability to improve the traditional approaches. Here we experimented some variants of the known Neural Gas model, exploring both supervised and unsupervised paradigms of Machine Learning, on the classification of Globular Clusters, extracted from the NGC1399 HST data. Main focus of this work was to use a well-tested playground to scientifically validate such kind of models for further extended experiments in astrophysics and using other standard Machine Learning methods (for instance Random Forest and Multi Layer Perceptron neural network) for a comparison of performances in terms of purity and completeness.Comment: Proceedings of the XIX International Conference "Data Analytics and Management in Data Intensive Domains" (DAMDID/RCDL 2017), Moscow, Russia, October 10-13, 2017, 8 pages, 4 figure

Wide-Field Hubble Space Telescope Observations of the Globular Cluster System in NGC1399

We present a comprehensive high spatial-resolution imaging study of globular clusters (GCs) in NGC1399, the central giant elliptical cD galaxy in the Fornax galaxy cluster, conducted with HST/ACS. Using a novel technique to construct drizzled PSF libraries for HST/ACS data, we accurately determine the fidelity of GC structural parameter measurements from detailed artificial star cluster experiments. The measurement of rh for the major fraction of the NGC1399 GC system reveals a trend of increasing rh versus galactocentric distance, Rgal, out to about 10 kpc and a flat relation beyond. This trend is very similar for blue and red GCs which are found to have a mean size ratio of rh(red)/rh(blue)=0.82+/-0.11 at all galactocentric radii from the core regions of the galaxy out to ~40 kpc. This suggests that the size difference between blue and red GCs is due to internal mechanisms related to the evolution of their constituent stellar populations. Modeling the mass density profile of NGC1399 shows that additional external dynamical mechanisms are required to limit the GC size in the galaxy halo regions to rh~2 pc. We suggest that this may be realized by an exotic GC orbit distribution function, an extended dark matter halo, and/or tidal stress induced by the increased stochasticity in the dwarf halo substructure at larger Rgal. We match our GC rh measurements with radial velocity data from the literature and find that compact GCs show a significantly smaller line-of-sight velocity dispersion, =225+/-25 km/s, than their extended counterparts, =317+/-21 km/s. Considering the weaker statistical correlation in the GC rh-color and the GC rh-Rgal relations, the more significant GC size-dynamics relation appears to be astrophysically more relevant and hints at the dominant influence of the GC orbit distribution function on the evolution of GC structural parameters.Comment: 22 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, a high-quality PDF version is available at http://www.astro.puc.cl/~tpuzia/PUC/Home.htm

Exploratory X-ray Monitoring of Luminous Radio-Quiet Quasars at High Redshift: No Evidence for Evolution in X-ray Variability

We report on the second installment of an X-ray monitoring project of seven luminous radio-quiet quasars (RQQs). New {\sl Chandra} observations of four of these, at $4.10\leq z\leq4.35$, yield a total of six X-ray epochs, per source, with temporal baselines of $\sim850-1600$ days in the rest frame. These data provide the best X-ray light curves for RQQs at $z>4$, to date, enabling qualitative investigations of the X-ray variability behavior of such sources for the first time. On average, these sources follow the trend of decreasing variability amplitude with increasing luminosity, and there is no evidence for X-ray variability increasing toward higher redshifts, in contrast with earlier predictions of potential evolutionary scenarios. An ensemble variability structure function reveals that their variability level remains relatively flat across $\approx20 - 1000$ days in the rest frame and it is generally lower than that of three similarly luminous RQQs at $1.33\leq z\leq 2.74$ over the same temporal range. We discuss possible explanations for the increased variability of the lower-redshift subsample and, in particular, whether higher accretion rates play a leading role. Near-simultaneous optical monitoring of the sources at $4.10\leq z\leq 4.35$ indicates that none is variable on $\approx1$-day timescales, although flux variations of up to $\sim25$\% are observed on $\approx100$-day timescales, typical of RQQs at similar redshifts. Significant optical-X-ray spectral slope variations observed in two of these sources are consistent with the levels observed in luminous RQQs and are dominated by X-ray variations.Comment: 11 pages (emulateapj), 4 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap

C IV Broad Absorption Line Variability in QSO Spectra from SDSS Surveys

Broad absorption lines (BALs) in the spectra of quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) are thought to arise from outflowing winds along our line of sight; winds, in turn, are thought to originate from the accretion disk, in the very surroundings of the central supermassive black hole (SMBH), and they likely affect the accretion process onto the SMBH, as well as galaxy evolution.\\ BALs can exhibit variability on timescales typically ranging from months to years. We analyze such variability and, in particular, BAL disappearance, with the aim of investigating QSO physics and structure.\\ We search for disappearing C {\scriptsize{IV}} BALs in the spectra of 1319 QSOs from different programs from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS); the analyzed time span covers $0.28-4.9$ yr (rest frame), and the source redshifts are in the range $1.68-4.27$. This is to date the largest sample ever used for such a study.\\ We find 67 sources ($5.1_{-0.6}^{+0.7}$\% of the sample) with 73 disappearing BALs in total ($3.9_{-0.5}^{+0.5}$\% of the total number of C {\scriptsize{IV}} BALs detected; \textbf{some sources have more than one BAL that disappears}). We compare the sample of disappearing BALs to the whole sample of BALs, and investigate the correlation in the variability of multiple troughs in the same spectrum. We also derive estimates of the average lifetime of a BAL trough and of the BAL phase along our line of sight

Photometric classification of emission line galaxies with machine-learning methods

In this paper, we discuss an application of machine-learning-based methods to the identification of candidate active galactic nucleus (AGN) from optical survey data and to the automatic classification of AGNs in broad classes. We applied four different machine-learning algorithms, namely the Multi Layer Perceptron, trained, respectively, with the Conjugate Gradient, the Scaled Conjugate Gradient, the Quasi Newton learning rules and the Support Vector Machines, to tackle the problem of the classification of emission line galaxies in different classes, mainly AGNs versus non-AGNs, obtained using optical photometry in place of the diagnostics based on line intensity ratios which are classically used in the literature. Using the same photometric features, we discuss also the behaviour of the classifiers on finer AGN classification tasks, namely Seyfert I versus Seyfert II, and Seyfert versus LINER. Furthermore, we describe the algorithms employed, the samples of spectroscopically classified galaxies used to train the algorithms, the procedure followed to select the photometric parameters and the performances of our methods in terms of multiple statistical indicators. The results of the experiments show that the application of self-adaptive data mining algorithms trained on spectroscopic data sets and applied to carefully chosen photometric parameters represents a viable alternative to the classical methods that employ time-consuming spectroscopic observations