Interaction between the Intergalactic Medium and Galactic Outflows from Dwarf Galaxies

We have carried out 2D hydrodynamical simulations in order to study the interaction between supernova-powered gas outflows from low-mass galaxies and the local intergalactic medium (IGM). We are specifically interested in investigating whether a high pressure IGM, such as that in clusters of galaxies, can prevent the gas from escaping from the galaxy. The interface between the outflow and ambient IGM is demarcated by a dense expanding shell formed by the gas swept-up by the outflow. A sufficiently high IGM pressure can bring the shell to a halt well before it escapes the galaxy. Galaxies in such high pressure environments are, however, to be ploughing through the IGM at relatively high velocities. Hence, they will also be subject to ram pressure, which acts to strip the gas from the galaxy. We have carried out simulations that take into account the combined impact of ram pressure and thermal pressure. We find that ram pressure deforms the shell into a tail-like structure, fragments it into dense clouds and eventually drags the clouds away from the galaxy. The clouds are potential sites of star formation and if viewed during this transient phase, the galaxy will appear to have a low-surface brightness tail much like the galaxies with diffuse comet-like tail seen in z=1.15 cluster 3C324. In contrast, the relatively unhindered outflows in low density, low temperature environments can drive the shells of swept-up gas out to large distances from the galaxy. Such shells, if they intersect a quasar line-of-sight, would give rise to Ly $\alpha$ absorption lines of the kind seen in quasar spectra.Comment: 32 pages, 6 encapsulated Postscript figures, 7 gif figures. Accepted for publication in MNRA

Pre-Heated Isentropic Gas in Groups of Galaxies

We confirm that the standard assumption of isothermal, shock-heated gas in cluster potentials is unable to reproduce the observed X-ray luminosity- temperature relation of groups of galaxies. As an alternative, we construct a physically motivated model for the adiabatic collapse of pre-heated gas into an isothermal potential that improves upon the original work of Kaiser (1991). The luminosity and temperature of the gas is calculated, assuming an appropriate distribution of halo formation times and radiation due to both bremsstrahlung and recombination processes. This model successfully reproduces the slope and dispersion of the luminosity-temperature relation of galaxy groups. We also present calculations of the temperature and luminosity functions for galaxy groups under the prescription of this model. This model makes two strong predictions for haloes with total masses M<10^13 M_sun, which are not yet testable with current data: (1) the gas mass fraction will increase in direct proportion to the halo mass; (2) the gas temperature will be larger than the virial temperature of the mass. The second effect is strong enough that group masses determined from gas temperatures will be overestimated by about an order of magnitude if it is assumed that the gas temperature is the virial temperature. The entropy required to match observations can be obtained by heating the gas at the turnaround time, for example, to about 3 X 10^6 K at z=1, which is too high to be generated by a normal rate of supernova explosions. This model breaks down on the scale of low mass clusters, but this is an acceptable limitation, as we expect accretion shocks to contribute significantly to the entropy of the gas in such objects.Comment: Final, refereed version, accepted by MNRAS. One new figure and several clarifying statements have been added. Uses mn.a4.sty (hacked mn.sty). Also available from http://astrowww.phys.uvic.ca/~balogh/entropy.ps.g

The large-scale morphology of IRAS galaxies

At present, visual inspection is the only method for comparing the large-scale morphologies in the distribution of galaxies to those in model universes generated by N-body simulations. To remedy the situation, we have developed a set of three structure functions (S1, S2, S3) that quantify the degree of large-scale prolateness, oblateness, and sphericity/uniformity of a 3-D particle distribution and have applied them to a volume-limited (less than = 4000 km/s) sample of 699 IRAS galaxies with f sub 60 greater than 1.2 Jy. To determine the structure functions, we randomly select 500 galaxies as origins of spherical windows of radius R sub w, locate the centroid of the galaxies in the window (assuming all galaxies have equal mass) and then, compute the principal moments of inertia (I sub 1, I sub 2, I sub 3) about the centroid. Each S sub i is a function of (I sub 2)/(I sub 1) and (I sub 3)/I sub 1). S1, S2, and S3 tend to unity for highly prolate, oblate, and uniform distributions, respectively and tend to zero otherwise. The resulting 500 values of S sub i at each scale R sub w are used to construct a histogram

A Weak Gravitational Lensing Analysis of Abell 2390

We report on the detection of dark matter in the cluster Abell 2390 using the weak gravitational distortion of background galaxies. We find that the cluster light and total mass distributions are quite similar over an angular scale of \simeq 7^\prime \;(1 \Mpc). The cluster galaxy and mass distributions are centered on the cluster cD galaxy and exhibit elliptical isocontours in the central \simeq 2^\prime \; (280 \kpc). The major axis of the ellipticity is aligned with the direction defined by the cluster cD and a ``straight arc'' located $\simeq 38^{\prime\prime}$ to the northwest. We determined the radial mass-to-light profile for this cluster and found a constant value of $(320 \pm 90) h\; M_\odot/L_{\odot V}$, which is consistent with other published determinations. We also compared our weak lensing azimuthally averaged radial mass profile with a spherical mass model proposed by the CNOC group on the basis of their detailed dynamical study of the cluster. We find good agreement between the two profiles, although there are weak indications that the CNOC density profile may be falling more steeply for $\theta\geq 3^\prime$ (420\kpc).Comment: 14 pages, latex file. Postscript file and one additional figure are available at ftp://magicbean.berkeley.edu/pub/squires/a2390/massandlight.ps.g

Joint Analysis of Cluster Observations: II. Chandra/XMM-Newton X-ray and Weak Lensing Scaling Relations for a Sample of 50 Rich Clusters of Galaxies

We present a study of multiwavelength X-ray and weak lensing scaling relations for a sample of 50 clusters of galaxies. Our analysis combines Chandra and XMM-Newton data using an energy-dependent cross-calibration. After considering a number of scaling relations, we find that gas mass is the most robust estimator of weak lensing mass, yielding 15 +/- 6% intrinsic scatter at r500 (the pseudo-pressure YX has a consistent scatter of 22%+/-5%). The scatter does not change when measured within a fixed physical radius of 1 Mpc. Clusters with small BCG to X-ray peak offsets constitute a very regular population whose members have the same gas mass fractions and whose even smaller <10% deviations from regularity can be ascribed to line of sight geometrical effects alone. Cool-core clusters, while a somewhat different population, also show the same (<10%) scatter in the gas mass-lensing mass relation. There is a good correlation and a hint of bimodality in the plane defined by BCG offset and central entropy (or central cooling time). The pseudo-pressure YX does not discriminate between the more relaxed and less relaxed populations, making it perhaps the more even-handed mass proxy for surveys. Overall, hydrostatic masses underestimate weak lensing masses by 10% on the average at r500; but cool-core clusters are consistent with no bias, while non-cool-core clusters have a large and constant 15-20% bias between r2500 and r500, in agreement with N-body simulations incorporating unthermalized gas. For non-cool-core clusters, the bias correlates well with BCG ellipticity. We also examine centroid shift variance and and power ratios to quantify substructure; these quantities do not correlate with residuals in the scaling relations. Individual clusters have for the most part forgotten the source of their departures from self-similarity.Comment: Corrects an error in the X-ray luminosities (erratum submitted)---none of the other results are affected. Go to http://sfstar.sfsu.edu/jaco for an electronic fitter and updated quick data download link

Cold gas in group-dominant elliptical galaxies

We present IRAM 30m telescope observations of the CO(1-0) and (2-1) lines in a sample of 11 group-dominant elliptical galaxies selected from the CLoGS nearby groups sample. Our observations confirm the presence of molecular gas in 4 of the 11 galaxies at >4 sigma significance, and combining these with data from the literature we find a detection rate of 43+-14%, comparable to the detection rate for nearby radio galaxies, suggesting that group-dominant ellipticals may be more likely to contain molecular gas than their non-central counterparts. Those group-dominant galaxies which are detected typically contain ~2x10^8 Msol of molecular gas, and although most have low star formation rates (<1 Msol/yr) they have short depletion times, indicating that the gas must be replenished on timescales ~100 Myr. Almost all of the galaxies contain active nuclei, and we note while the data suggest that CO may be more common in the most radio-loud galaxies, the mass of molecular gas required to power the active nuclei through accretion is small compared to the masses observed. We consider possible origin mechanisms for the gas, through cooling of stellar ejecta within the galaxies, group-scale cooling flows, and gas-rich mergers, and find probable examples of each type within our sample, confirming that a variety of processes act to drive the build up of molecular gas in group-dominant ellipticals.Comment: 9 pages, 5 postscript figures, 4 tables, accepted by A&A. Revised throughout in response to referee's comments, including updates to Table 1 and Figure 4, and addition of Figure

A Low Upper Limit to the Lyman Continuum Emission of two galaxies at z 3

Long exposure, long-slit spectra have been obtained in the UV/optical bands for two galaxies at z=2.96 and z=3.32 to investigate the fraction of ionizing UV photons escaping from high redshifts galaxies. The two targets are among the brightest galaxies discovered by Steidel and collaborators and they have different properties in terms of Lyman-alpha emission and dust reddening. No significant Lyman continuum emission has been detected. The noise level in the spectra implies an upper limit of f_{rel,esc}\equiv 3 f(900)/f(1500)< 16% for the relative escape fraction of ionizing photons, after correction for absorption by the intervening intergalactic medium. This upper limit is 4 times lower than the previous detection derived from a composite spectrum of 29 Lyman break galaxies at z 3.4. If this value is typical of the escape fraction of the z 3 galaxies, and is added to the expected contribution of the QSO population, the derived UV background is in good agreement with the one derived by the proximity effect.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figures, ApJ Letters in pres

On the Energy Required to Eject Processed Matter from Galaxies

We evaluate the minimum energy input rate that starbursts require for expelling their newly processed matter from their host galaxies. Special attention is given to the pressure caused by the environment in which a galaxy is situated, as well as to the intrinsic rotation of the gaseous component. We account for these factors and for a massive dark matter distribution, and develop a self-consistent solution for the interstellar matter gas distribution. Our results are in excellent agreement with the results of Mac Low & Ferrara (1999) for galaxies with a flattened disk-like ISM density distribution and a low intergalactic gas pressure ($P_{IGM}/k$ $\leq$ 1 cm$^{-3}$ K). However, our solution also requires a much larger energy input rate threshold when one takes into consideration both a larger intergalactic pressure and the possible existence of a low-density, non-rotating, extended gaseous halo component.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, Accepted for publication in Ap

The time-evolution of bias

We study the evolution of the bias factor b and the mass-galaxy correlation coefficient r in a simple analytic model for galaxy formation and the gravitational growth of clustering. The model shows that b and r can be strongly time-dependent, but tend to approach unity even if galaxy formation never ends as the gravitational growth of clustering debiases the older galaxies. The presence of random fluctuations in the sites of galaxy formation relative to the mass distribution can cause large and rapidly falling bias values at high redshift.Comment: 4 pages, with 2 figures included. Typos corrected to match published ApJL version. Color figure and links at http://www.sns.ias.edu/~max/bias.html or from [email protected]