623 research outputs found
Is there any evidence that ionised outflows quench star formation in type 1 quasars at z<1?
The aim of this paper is to test the basic model of negative AGN feedback.
According to this model, once the central black hole accretes at the Eddington
limit and reaches a certain critical mass, AGN driven outflows blow out gas,
suppressing star formation in the host galaxy and self-regulating black hole
growth. We consider a sample of 224 quasars selected from the SDSS at z<1
observed in the infrared band by Herschel. We evaluate the star formation rate
in relation to several outflow signatures traced by the [OIII]4959,5007 and
[OII]3726,3729 emission lines in about half of the sample with high quality
spectra. Most of the quasars show asymmetric and broad wings in [OIII], which
we interpret as outflow signatures. We separate the quasars in two groups,
``weakly'' and ``strongly'' outflowing, using three different criteria. When we
compare the mean star formation rate in five redshift bins in the two groups,
we find that the SFRs are comparable or slightly larger in the strongly
outflowing quasars. We estimate the stellar mass from SED fitting and the
quasars are distributed along the star formation main sequence, although with a
large scatter. The scatter from this relation is uncorrelated with respect to
the kinematic properties of the outflow. Moreover, for quasars dominated in the
infrared by starburst or by AGN emission, we do not find any correlation
between the star formation rate and the velocity of the outflow, a trend
previously reported in the literature for pure starburst galaxies. We conclude
that the basic AGN negative feedback scenario seems not to agree with our
results. Although we use a large sample of quasars, we did not find any
evidence that the star formation rate is suppressed in the presence of AGN
driven outflows on large scale. A possibility is that feedback is effective
over much longer timescales than those of single episodes of quasar activity.Comment: 18 pages, new version that implements the suggestions of the referee
and matches the AA published versio
New XMM-Newton observation of the Phoenix cluster: properties of the cool core
(Abridged) We present a spectral analysis of a deep (220 ks) XMM-Newton
observation of the Phoenix cluster (SPT-CL J2344-4243), which we also combine
with Chandra archival ACIS-I data. We extract CCD and RGS X-ray spectra from
the core region to search for the signature of cold gas, and constrain the mass
deposition rate in the cooling flow which is thought to be responsible of the
massive star formation episode observed in the BCG. We find an average mass
deposition rate of /yr in the temperature range 0.3-3.0 keV from MOS data. A
temperature-resolved analysis shows that a significant amount of gas is
deposited only above 1.8 keV, while upper limits of the order of hundreds of
/yr can be put in the 0.3-1.8 keV temperature range. From pn data we
obtain /yr, and the
upper limits from the temperature-resolved analysis are typically a factor of 3
lower than MOS data. In the RGS spectrum, no line emission from ionization
states below Fe XXIII is seen above , and the amount of gas cooling
below keV has a best-fit value
/yr. In addition, our analysis of the FIR SED of the BCG based on
Herschel data provides /yr, significantly lower
than previous estimates by a factor 1.5. Current data are able to firmly
identify substantial amount of cooling gas only above 1.8 keV in the core of
the Phoenix cluster. While MOS data analysis is consistent with values as high
as within , pn data provide
yr at c.l. at temperature below 1.8 keV. At present, this
discrepancy cannot be explained on the basis of known calibration uncertainties
or other sources of statistical noise.Comment: A&A in press, typos corrected, revised text according to published
versio
The limited reach of fake news on Twitter during 2019 European elections
The advent of social media changed the way we consume content, favoring a disintermediated access to, and production of information. This scenario has been matter of critical discussion about its impact on society, magnified in the case of the Arab Springs or heavily criticized during Brexit and the 2016 U.S. elections. In this work we explore information consumption on Twitter during the 2019 European Parliament electoral campaign by analyzing the interaction patterns of official news outlets, disinformation outlets, politicians, people from the showbiz and many others. We extensively explore interactions among different classes of accounts in the months preceding the elections, held between 23rd and 26th of May, 2019. We collected almost 400,000 tweets posted by 863 accounts having different roles in the public society. Through a thorough quantitative analysis we investigate the information flow among them, also exploiting geolocalized information. Accounts show the tendency to confine their interaction within the same class and the debate rarely crosses national borders. Moreover, we do not find evidence of an organized network of accounts aimed at spreading disinformation. Instead, disinformation outlets are largely ignored by the other actors and hence play a peripheral role in online political discussions
The reversal of the SF-density relation in a massive, X-ray selected galaxy cluster at z=1.58: results from Herschel
Dusty, star-forming galaxies have a critical role in the formation and
evolution of massive galaxies in the Universe. Using deep far-infrared imaging
in the range 100-500um obtained with the Herschel telescope, we investigate the
dust-obscured star formation in the galaxy cluster XDCP J0044.0-2033 at z=1.58,
the most massive cluster at z >1.5, with a measured mass M200= 4.7x10
Msun. We perform an analysis of the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of 12
cluster members (5 spectroscopically confirmed) detected with >3
significance in the PACS maps, all ULIRGs. The individual star formation rates
(SFRs) lie in the range 155-824 Ms/yr, with dust temperatures of 2435 K.
We measure a strikingly high amount of star formation (SF) in the cluster core,
SFR ( 1875158 Ms/yr, 4x higher than the amount of star
formation in the cluster outskirts. This scenario is unprecedented in a galaxy
cluster, showing for the first time a reversal of the SF-density relation at
z~1.6 in a massive cluster.Comment: Letter accepted for publication in MNRAS, ESA Press Release on 18
December 201
CrisMap: A Big Data Crisis Mapping System Based on Damage Detection and Geoparsing
Natural disasters, as well as human-made disasters, can have a deep impact on wide geographic areas, and emergency responders can benefit from the early estimation of emergency consequences. This work presents CrisMap, a Big Data crisis mapping system capable of quickly collecting and analyzing social media data. CrisMap extracts potential crisis- related actionable information from tweets by adopting a classification technique based on word embeddings and by exploiting a combination of readily-available semantic annotators to geoparse tweets. The enriched tweets are then visualized in customizable, Web-based dashboards, also leveraging ad-hoc quantitative visualizations like choropleth maps. The maps produced by our system help to estimate the impact of the emergency in its early phases, to identify areas that have been severely struck, and to acquire a greater situational awareness. We extensively benchmark the performance of our system on two Italian natural disasters by validating our maps against authoritative data. Finally, we perform a qualitative case-study on a recent devastating earthquake occurred in Central Italy
New fully empirical calibrations of strong-line metallicity indicators in star-forming galaxies
We derive new empirical calibrations for strong-line diagnostics of gas-phase metallicity in local star-forming galaxies by uniformly applying the Te method over the full metallicity range probed by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). To measure electron temperatures at high metallicity, where the auroral lines needed are not detected in single galaxies, we stacked spectra of more than 110 000 galaxies from the SDSS in bins of log[O ii]/Hβ and log[O iii]/Hβ. This stacking scheme does not assume any dependence of metallicity on mass or star formation rate, but only that galaxies with the same line ratios have the same oxygen abundance. We provide calibrations which span more than 1 dex in metallicity and are entirely defined on a consistent absolute Te metallicity scale for galaxies. We apply our calibrations to the SDSS sample and find that they provide consistent metallicity estimates to within 0.05 dex.MC acknowledges financial support from INAF for his PhD fellowship. RM acknowledges support from the ERC Advanced Grant 695671 "QUENCH'' and support from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). Funding for the SDSS and SDSS-II has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Japanese Monbukagakusho, the Max Planck Society and the Higher Education Funding Council for England. The SDSS Web Site is http://www.sdss.org/
Strongly star-forming rotating disks in a complex merging system at z = 4,7 as revealed by ALMA
We performed a kinematical analysis of the [CII] line emission of the BR
1202-0725 system at z~4,7 using ALMA observations. The most prominent sources
of this system are a quasar and a submillimeter galaxy, separated by a
projected distance of about 24 kpc and characterized by very high SFR, higher
than 1000 Msun/yr. However, the ALMA observations reveal that these galaxies
apparently have undisturbed rotating disks, which is at variance with the
commonly accepted scenario in which strong star formation activity is induced
by a major merger. We also detected faint components which, after spectral
deblending, were spatially resolved from the main QSO and SMG emissions. The
relative velocities and positions of these components are compatible with
orbital motions within the gravitational potentials generated by the QSO host
galaxy and the SMG, suggesting that they are smaller galaxies in interaction or
gas clouds in accretion flows of tidal streams. We did not find any clear
spectral evidence for outflows caused by AGN or stellar feedback. This suggests
that the high star formation rates might be induced by interactions or minor
mergers with these companions, which do not affect the large-scale kinematics
of the disks, however. Our kinematical analysis also indicates that the QSO and
the SMG have similar Mdyn, mostly in the form of molecular gas, and that the
QSO host galaxy and the SMG are seen close to face-on with slightly different
disk inclinations: the QSO host galaxy is seen almost face-on (i~15), while the
SMG is seen at higher inclinations (i~25). Finally, the ratio between the black
hole mass of the QSO, obtained from XShooter spectroscopy, and the Mdyn of the
host galaxy is similar to value found in very massive local galaxies,
suggesting that the evolution of black hole galaxy relations is probably better
studied with dynamical than with stellar host galaxy masses.Comment: Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic
Constraint on the Assembly and Dynamics of Galaxies. II. Properties of Kiloparsec-Scale Clumps in Rest-Frame Optical Emission of z ~ 2 Star-Forming Galaxies
We study the properties of luminous stellar "clumps" identified in deep, high-resolution Hubble Space Telescope NIC2/F160W imaging at 1.6 μm of six z ~ 2 star-forming galaxies with existing near-infrared integral field spectroscopy from SINFONI at the Very Large Telescope. Individual clumps contribute ~0.5%-15% of the galaxy-integrated rest-frame ≈5000 Å emission, with median of ≈2%; the total contribution of clump light ranges from 10% to 25%. The median intrinsic clump size and stellar mass are ~1 kpc and ~10^9 M_☉, in the ranges for clumps identified in rest-UV or line emission in other studies. The clump sizes and masses in the subset of disks are broadly consistent with expectations for clump formation through gravitational instabilities in gas-rich, turbulent disks given the host galaxies' global properties. By combining the NIC2 data with Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS)/F814W imaging available for one source, and adaptive-optics-assisted SINFONI Hα data for another, we infer modest color, M/L, and stellar age variations within each galaxy. In these two objects, sets of clumps identified at different wavelengths do not fully overlap; NIC2-identified clumps tend to be redder/older than ACS- or Hα-identified clumps without rest-frame optical counterparts. There is evidence for a systematic trend of older ages at smaller galactocentric radii among the clumps, consistent with scenarios where inward migration of clumps transports material toward the central regions. From constraints on a bulge-like component at radii ≾1-3 kpc, none of the five disks in our sample appears to contain a compact massive stellar core, and we do not discern a trend of bulge stellar mass fraction with stellar age of the galaxy. Further observations are necessary to probe the buildup of stellar bulges and the role of clumps in this process
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