61 research outputs found
Formation of central massive objects via tidal compression
For a density that is not too sharply peaked towards the center, the local
tidal field becomes compressive in all three directions. Available gas can then
collapse and form a cluster of stars in the center, including or even being
dominated by a central black hole. We show that for a wide range of
(deprojected) Sersic profiles in a spherical potential, the tidal forces are
compressive within a region which encloses most of the corresponding light of
observed nuclear clusters in both late-type and early-type galaxies. In such
models, tidal forces become disruptive nearly everywhere for relatively large
Sersic indices n >= 3.5. We also show that the mass of a central massive object
(CMO) required to remove all radial compressive tidal forces scales linearly
with the mass of the host galaxy. If CMOs formed in (progenitor) galaxies with
n ~ 1, we predict a mass fraction of ~ 0.1-0.5%, consistent with observations
of nuclear clusters and super-massive black holes. While we find that tidal
compression possibly drives the formation of CMOs in galaxies, beyond the
central regions and on larger scales in clusters disruptive tidal forces might
contribute to prevent gas from cooling.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ. High resolution
version available at
http://www-obs.univ-lyon1.fr/labo/perso/eric.emsellem/preprint
The Stellar Content of the Polar Rings in the Galaxies NGC 2685 and NGC 4650A
We present the results of stellar photometry of polar-ring galaxies NGC 2685
and NGC 4650A, using the archival data obtained with the Hubble Space
Telescope's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. Polar rings of these galaxies were
resolved into ~800 and ~430 stellar objects in the B, V and Ic bands,
considerable part of which are blue supergiants located in the young stellar
complexes. The stellar features in the CM-diagrams are best represented by
isochrones with metallicity Z = 0.008. The process of star formation in the
polar rings of both galaxies was continuous and the age of the youngest
detected stars is about 9 Myr for NGC 2685 and 6.5 Myr for NGC 4650A.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures, AJ 2004 February, accepte
How Special are Brightest Cluster Galaxies? The Impact of Near-Infrared Luminosities on Scaling Relations for BCGs
Using the extended J, H and K magnitudes provided by the 2MASS data archive,
we consider the position of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) in the observed
relations between inferred supermassive black hole (SMBH) mass and the host
galaxy properties, as well as their position in the stellar velocity dispersion
and luminosity (sigma-L) relation, compared to E and S0 galaxies. We find that
SMBH masses (M) derived from near-infrared (NIR) magnitudes do not exceed
10e9.5Msol and that these masses agree well with the predictions made from
sigma. In the NIR, there is no evidence that BCGs leave the sigma-L relation
defined by less luminous galaxies. The higher SMBH masses predicted from V-band
luminosities (M~10e10.5Msol) are attributed to the presence of extended
envelopes around the BCGs, however, this will need to be confirmed using deeper
multiwavelength imaging.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figures (4 color), uses emulateapj.cls. Replaced with ApJ
Letters Accepted version. Conclusions are unchange
Ubiquity of optical activity in planar metamaterial scatterers
Recently it was discovered that periodic lattices of metamaterial scatterers
show optical activity, even if the scatterers or lattice show no 2D or 3D
chirality, if the illumination breaks symmetry. In this Letter we demonstrate
that such `pseudo-chirality' is intrinsic to any single planar metamaterial
scatterer and in fact has a well-defined value at a universal bound. We argue
that in any circuit model, a nonzero electric and magnetic polarizability
derived from a single resonance automatically imply strong bianisotropy, i.e.,
magneto-electric cross polarizability at the universal bound set by energy
conservation. We confirm our claim by extracting polarizability tensors and
cross sections for handed excitation from transmission measurements on
near-infrared split ring arrays, and electrodynamic simulations for diverse
metamaterial scatterers.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Correlations Between Central Massive Objects And Their Host Galaxies: From Bulgeless Spirals to Ellipticals
Recent observations by Ferrarese et al. (2006) and Wehner et al. (2006)
reveal that a majority of galaxies contain a central massive object (CMO),
either a supermassive black hole (SMBH) or a compact stellar nucleus,
regardless of the galaxy mass or morphological type, and that there is a tight
relation between the masses of CMOs and those of the host galaxies. Several
recent studies show that feedback from black holes can successfully explain the
\msigma correlation in massive elliptical galaxies that contain SMBHs.
However, puzzles remain in spirals or dwarf spheroids that do not appear to
have black holes but instead harbor a compact central stellar cluster. Here we
use three-dimensional, smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations of isolated
galaxies to study the formation and evolution of CMOs in bulgeless disk
galaxies, and simulations of merging galaxies to study the transition of the
CMO--host mass relation from late-type bulgeless spirals to early-type
ellipticals. Our results suggest that the observed correlations may be
established primarily by the depletion of gas in the central region by
accretion and star-formation, and may hold for all galaxy types. A systematic
search for CMOs in the nuclei of bulgeless disk galaxies would offer a test of
this conclusion. (Abridged)Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, accepted to Ap
Empirical Models for Dark Matter Halos. III. The Kormendy relation and the log(rho_e)-log(R_e) relation
We have recently shown that the 3-parameter density-profile model from
Prugniel & Simien provides a better fit to simulated, galaxy- and
cluster-sized, dark matter halos than an NFW-like model with arbitrary inner
profile slope gamma (Paper I). By construction, the parameters of the
Prugniel-Simien model equate to those of the Sersic R^{1/n} function fitted to
the projected distribution. Using the Prugniel-Simien model, we are therefore
able to show that the location of simulated (10^{12} M_sun) galaxy-sized dark
matter halos in the _e-log(R_e) diagram coincides with that of brightest
cluster galaxies, i.e., the dark matter halos appear consistent with the
Kormendy relation defined by luminous elliptical galaxies. These objects are
also seen to define the new, and equally strong, relation log(rho_e) = 0.5 -
2.5log(R_e), in which rho_e is the internal density at r=R_e. Simulated
(10^{14.5} M_sun) cluster-sized dark matter halos and the gas component of real
galaxy clusters follow the relation log(rho_e) = 2.5[1 - log(R_e)]. Given the
shapes of the various density profiles, we are able to conclude that while
dwarf elliptical galaxies and galaxy clusters can have dark matter halos with
effective radii of comparable size to the effective radii of their baryonic
component, luminous elliptical galaxies can not. For increasingly large
elliptical galaxies, with increasingly large profile shapes `n', to be dark
matter dominated at large radii requires dark matter halos with increasingly
large effective radii compared to the effective radii of their stellar
component.Comment: AJ, in press. (Paper I can be found at astro-ph/0509417
A log-quadratic relation for predicting supermassive black hole masses from the host bulge Sersic index
We reinvestigate the correlation between black hole mass and bulge
concentration. With an increased galaxy sample, updated estimates of galaxy
distances, black hole masses, and Sersic indices `n' - a measure of
concentration - we perform a least-squares regression analysis to obtain a
relation suitable for the purpose of predicting black hole masses in other
galaxies. In addition to the linear relation, log(M_bh) = 7.81(+/-0.08) +
2.69(+/-0.28)[log(n/3)] with epsilon_(intrin)=0.31 dex, we investigated the
possibility of a higher order M_bh-n relation, finding the second order term in
the best-fitting quadratic relation to be inconsistent with a value of zero at
greater than the 99.99% confidence level. The optimal relation is given by
log(M_bh) = 7.98(+/-0.09) + 3.70(+/-0.46)[log(n/3)] -
3.10(+/-0.84)[log(n/3)]^2, with epsilon_(intrin)=0.18 dex and a total absolute
scatter of 0.31 dex. Extrapolating the quadratic relation, it predicts black
holes with masses of ~10^3 M_sun in n=0.5 dwarf elliptical galaxies, compared
to ~10^5 M_sun from the linear relation, and an upper bound on the largest
black hole masses in the local universe, equal to 1.2^{+2.6}_{-0.4}x10^9
M_sun}. In addition, we show that the nuclear star clusters at the centers of
low-luminosity elliptical galaxies follow an extrapolation of the same
quadratic relation. Moreover, we speculate that the merger of two such
nucleated galaxies, accompanied by the merger and runaway collision of their
central star clusters, may result in the late-time formation of some
supermassive black holes. Finally, we predict the existence of, and provide
equations for, a relation between M_bh and the central surface brightness of
the host bulge
Extinction law variations and dust excitation in the spiral galaxy NGC 300
We investigate the origin of the strong radial gradient in the
ultraviolet-to-infrared ratio in the spiral galaxy NGC 300, and emphasize the
importance of local variations in the interstellar medium geometry, concluding
that they cannot be neglected with respect to metallicity effects. This
analysis is based upon a combination of maps from GALEX and Spitzer, and from
the ground (UBVRI, Halpha and Hbeta). We select ionizing stellar clusters
associated with HII regions of widely varying morphologies, and derive their
fundamental parameters from population synthesis fitting of their spectral
energy distributions, measured to eliminate local backgrounds accurately. From
these fits, we conclude that the stellar extinction law is highly variable in
the line of sight of young clusters of similar ages. In the particular model
geometry that we consider most appropriate to the sampled regions, we checked
that our findings are not significantly altered by the correct treatment of
radiative transfer effects. The variations are systematic in nature: extinction
laws of the Milky Way or LMC type are associated with compact HII regions (the
compacity being quantified in two different ways), while clusters surrounded by
diffuse HII regions follow extinction laws of the 30 Doradus or SMC type. The
Calzetti starburst attenuation law, although most often degenerate with the 30
Doradus extinction law, overpredicts ionizing photon fluxes by large amounts.
We also find that the extinction law variations are correlated with the column
density of dust species emitting in the near- and mid-infrared. Finally, we
briefly discuss the nebular to stellar extinction ratios, and the excitation of
aromatic band carriers, invalidating their claimed association with cold dust.Comment: accepted for publication in ApJ -- figure 6 abridged her
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