Astrophysics

A Circumnuclear Disk (CND) of molecular gas occupies the central few parsecs of the Galactic Center. It is likely subject to turbulent disruptions from violent events in its surrounding environment, but the effect of such perturbations has not yet been investigated in detail. Here we perform 3D, N-body/smoothed particle hydrodynamic (SPH) simulations with an adapted general turbulence driving method to investigate the CND's structural evolution, in particular its reaction to varied scales of injected turbulence. We find that, because of shear flow in the disk, transient arcs of gas (streams) naturally arise when turbulence is driven on large scales (up to ?? ~pc), as might occur when a supernova blast wave encounters the CND. Because energetic events arise naturally and often in the central parsecs of our Galaxy, this result suggests that the transient structures that characterize the CND do not imply that the CND itself is a transient structure. We also note that features similar to the density concentrations, or ``clumps'', detailed in literature emerge when we account for the observed orientation of the disk and for the spatial resolution of observations. As such, clumps could be an artifact of observational limitations.

Submillimetre galaxies (SMGs) are bright sources at submillimetre wavelengths. Made up of mostly of high-z galaxies, SMGs are amongst the most luminous dusty galaxies in the Universe. Studying their environments and clustering strength is thus important to put these galaxies in a cosmological context. We present an environmental study of a sample of 116 SMGs in 96 ALMA observation fields, which were initially discovered with the AzTEC camera on ASTE and identified with high-resolution ALMA imaging within the COSMOS survey field, having either spectroscopic or unambiguous photometric redshift. We analysed their environments making use of the latest release of the COSMOS photometric catalogue, COSMOS2015, a catalogue that contains precise photometric redshifts for more than half a million objects over the 2deg2 COSMOS field. We searched for dense galaxy environments computing the so-called overdensity parameter as a function of distance within a radius of 5 arcmin from the SMG. We validated this approach spectroscopically for those SMGs for which spectroscopic redshift is available. As an additional test, we searched for extended X-ray emission as a proxy for the hot intracluster medium, performing an X-ray stacking analysis in the 0.5-2 keV band with a 32 arcsec aperture and our SMG position using all available XMM-Newton and Chandra X-ray observations of the COSMOS field. We find that 27% (31 out of 116) of the SMGs in our sample are located in a galactic dense environment; a fraction that is similar to previous studies. The spectroscopic redshift is known for 15 of these 31 sources, thus this photometric approach is tested using spectroscopy. We are able to confirm that 7 out of 15 SMGs lie in high-density peaks. However, the search for associated extended X-ray emission via an X-ray stacking analysis leads to a detection that is not statistically significant.

Understanding the geometry and kinematics of the broad line region (BLR) of active galactic nuclei (AGN) is important to estimate black hole masses in AGN and study the accretion process. The technique of reverberation mapping (RM) has provided estimates of BLR size for more than 100 AGN now, however, the structure of the BLR has been studied for only a handful number of objects. Towards this, we investigated the geometry of the BLR for a large sample of 57 AGN using archival RM data. We performed systematic modeling of the continuum and emission line light curves using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo method based on Bayesian statistics implemented in PBMAP (Parallel Bayesian code for reverberation-MAPping data) code to constrain BLR geometrical parameters and recover velocity integrated transfer function. We found that the recovered transfer functions have various shapes such as single-peaked, double-peaked and top-hat suggesting that AGN have very different BLR geometries. Our model lags are in general consistent with that estimated using the conventional cross-correlation methods. The BLR sizes obtained from our modeling approach is related to the luminosity with a slope of 0.583 (+/-) 0.026 and 0.471 (+/-) 0.084 based on H{\beta} and H{\alpha} lines, respectively. We found a non-linear response of emission line fluxes to the ionizing optical continuum for 93\% objects. The estimated virial factors for the AGN studied in this work range from 0.79 to 4.94 having a mean at 1.78 (+/-) 1.77 consistent with the values found in the literature.

In the manuscript, we report evidence on broad \oiii components apparently obscured in Type-2 AGN under the framework of the Unified model, after checking properties of broad \oiii emissions in large samples of Type-1 and Type-2 AGN in SDSS DR12. We can well confirm the statistically lower flux ratios of the broad to the core \oiii components in Type-2 AGN than in Type-1 AGN, which can be naturally explained by stronger obscured broad \oiii components by central dust torus in Type-2 AGN, unless the Unified model for AGN was not appropriate to the narrow emission lines. The results provide further evidence to support broad \oiii components coming from emission regions nearer to central BHs, and also indicate the core \oiii component as the better indicator for central activities in Type-2 AGN, due to few effects of obscuration on the core \oiii component. Considering the broad \oiii components as signs of central outflows, the results provide evidence for strong central outflows being preferentially obscured in Type-2 AGN. Furthermore, the obscured broad \oiii component can be applied to explain the different flux ratios of \oiiihb between Type-1 and Type-2 AGN in the BPT diagram.

We present a phase-space study of two stellar groups located at the core of the Orion complex: Briceño-1 and Orion Belt Population-near (OBP-near). We identify the groups with the unsupervised clustering algorithm, Shared Nearest Neighbor (SNN), which previously identified twelve new stellar substructures in the Orion complex. For each of the two groups, we derive the 3D space motions of individual stars using Gaia EDR3 proper motions supplemented by radial velocities from Gaia DR2, APOGEE-2, and GALAH DR3. We present evidence for radial expansion of the two groups from a common center. Unlike previous work, our study suggests that evidence of stellar group expansion is confined only to OBP-near and Briceño-1 whereas the rest of the groups in the complex show more complicated motions. Interestingly, the stars in the two groups lie at the center of a dust shell, as revealed via an extant 3D dust map. The exact mechanism that produces such coherent motions remains unclear, while the observed radial expansion and dust shell suggest that massive stellar feedback could have influenced the star formation history of these groups.

We study the mass-metallicity relation for 19 members of a spectroscopically-confirmed protocluster in the COSMOS field at z=2.2 (CC2.2), and compare it with that of 24 similarly selected field galaxies at the same redshift. Both samples are Hα emitting sources, chosen from the HiZELS narrow-band survey, with metallicities derived from N2 ( [NII]λ6584 Hα ) line ratio. For the mass-matched samples of protocluster and field galaxies, we find that protocluster galaxies with 10 9.9 M ????M ????10 10.9 M ??are metal deficient by 0.10±0.04 dex ( 2.5? significance) compared to their coeval field galaxies. This metal deficiency is absent for low mass galaxies, M ??< 10 9.9 M ??. Moreover, relying on both SED-derived and Hα (corrected for dust extinction based on M ??) SFRs, we find no strong environmental dependence of SFR- M ??relation, however, we are not able to rule out the existence of small dependence due to inherent uncertainties in both SFR estimators. The existence of 2.5? significant metal deficiency for massive protocluster galaxies favors a model in which funneling of the primordial cold gas through filaments dilutes the metal content of protoclusters at high redshifts ( z?? ). At these redshifts, gas reservoirs in filaments are dense enough to cool down rapidly and fall into the potential well of the protocluster to lower the gas-phase metallicity of galaxies. Moreover, part of this metal deficiency could be originated from galaxy interactions which are more prevalent in dense environments.

The abundances of r-process elements of very metal-poor stars capture the history of the r-process enrichment in the early stage of star formation in a galaxy. Currently, various types of astrophysical sites including neutron star mergers, magneto-rotational supernovae, and collapsars, are suggested as the origin of r-process elements. The time delay between the star formation and the production of r-process elements is the key to distinguish these scenarios with the caveat that the diffusion of r-process elements in the interstellar medium may induce the delay in r-process enrichment because r-process events are rare. Here we study the observed Ba abundance data of very metal-poor stars as the tracer of the early enrichment history of r-process elements. We find that the gradual increase of [Ba/Mg] with [Fe/H], which is remarkably similar among the Milky Way and classical dwarfs, requires a significant time delay (100 Myr -- 1 Gyr) of r-process events from star formation rather than the diffusion-induced delay. We stress that this conclusion is robust to the assumption regarding s-process contamination in the Ba abundances because the sources with no delay would overproduce Ba at very low metallicities even without the contribution from the s-process. Therefore we conclude that sources with a delay, possibly neutron star mergers, are the origins of r-process elements.

We report the relationship between the Gaia --VLBI position differences and the magnitudes of source structure effects in VLBI observations. Because the Gaia --VLBI position differences are statistically significant for a considerable number of common sources, we attempt to discuss and explain these position differences based on VLBI observations and available source images at cm-wavelengths. Based on the derived closure amplitude root-mean-square (CARMS), which quantifies the magnitudes of source structure effects in the VLBI observations used for building the third realization of the International Celestial Reference Frame, the arc lengths and normalized arc lengths of the position differences are examined in detail. The radio jet directions and the directions of the Gaia --VLBI position differences are investigated for a small sample of sources. Both the arc lengths and normalized arc lengths of the Gaia and VLBI positions are found to increase with the CARMS values. The majority of the sources with statistically significant position differences are associated with the sources having extended structure. Radio source structure is the one of the major factors of these position differences, and it can be the dominate factor for a number of sources. The vectors of the Gaia and VLBI position differences are parallel to the radio-jet directions, which is confirmed with stronger evidence.

The evolution of circumstellar discs is highly influenced by their surroundings, in particular by external photoevaporation due to nearby stars and dynamical truncations. The impact of these processes on disc populations depends on the dynamical evolution of the star-forming region. Here we implement a simple model of molecular cloud collapse and star formation to obtain primordial positions and velocities of young stars and follow their evolution in time, including that of their circumstellar discs. Our disc model takes into account viscous evolution, internal and external photoevaporation, dust evolution, and dynamical truncations. The disc evolution is resolved simultaneously with the star cluster dynamics and stellar evolution. Our results show that an extended period of star formation allows for massive discs formed later in the simulations to survive for several million years. This could explain massive discs surviving in regions of high UV radiation.

The properties of interstellar grains, such as grain size distribution and grain porosity, are affected by interstellar processing, in particular, coagulation and shattering, which take place in the dense and diffuse interstellar medium (ISM), respectively. In this paper, we formulate and calculate the evolution of grain size distribution and grain porosity through shattering and coagulation. For coagulation, we treat the grain evolution depending on the collision energy. Shattering is treated as a mechanism of forming small compact fragments. The balance between these processes are determined by the dense-gas mass fraction η dense , which determines the time fraction of coagulation relative to shattering. We find that the interplay between shattering supplying small grains and coagulation forming porous grains from shattered grains is fundamentally important in creating and maintaining porosity. The porosity rises to 0.7--0.9 (or the filling factor 0.3--0.1) around grain radii a??.1 μ m. We also find that, in the case of η dense =0.1 (very efficient shattering with weak coagulation) porosity significantly enhances coagulation, creating fluffy submicron grains with filling factors lower than 0.1. The porosity enhances the extinction by 10--20 per cent at all wavelengths for amorphous carbon and at ultraviolet wavelengths for silicate. The extinction curve shape of silicate becomes steeper if we take porosity into account. We conclude that the interplay between shattering and coagulation is essential in creating porous grains in the interstellar medium and that the resulting porosity can impact the grain size distributions and extinction curves.