Featured Researches

Astrophysics Of Galaxies

Revisiting Rotation Measures from the Canadian Galactic Plane Survey: the Magnetic Field in the Disk of the Outer Galaxy

Faraday rotation provides a valuable tracer of magnetic fields in the interstellar medium; catalogs of Faraday rotation measures provide key observations for studies of the Galactic magnetic field. We present a new catalog of rotation measures derived from the Canadian Galactic Plane Survey, covering a large region of the Galactic plane spanning 52 deg < l < 192 deg, -3 deg < b < 5 deg, along with northern and southern latitude extensions around l ~ 105 deg. We have derived rotation measures for 2234 sources (4 of which are known pulsars), 75% of which have no previous measurements, over an area of approximately 1300 square degrees. These new rotation measures increase the measurement density for this region of the Galactic plane by a factor of two.

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Astrophysics Of Galaxies

Revisiting newly Large Magellanic Cloud age gap star clusters

Recently, a noticeable number of new star clusters was identified in the outskirts of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) populating the so-called star cluster age gap, a space of time (~ 4-12 Gyr) where the only known star cluster is up-to-date ESO121-SC\,03. We used Survey of the Magellanic Stellar History (SMASH) DR2 data sets, as well as those employed to identify these star cluster candidates, to produce relatively deep color-magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of 17 out of 20 discovered age gap star clusters with the aim of investigating them in detail. Our analysis relies on a thorough CMD cleaning procedure of the field star contamination, which presents variations in its stellar density and astrophysical properties, such as luminosity and effective temperature, around the star cluster fields. We built star cluster CMDs from stars with membership probabilities assigned from the cleaning procedure. These CMDs and their respective spatial distribution maps favor the existence of LMC star field density fluctuations rather than age gap star clusters, although a definitive assessment on them will be possible from further deeper photometry.

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Astrophysics Of Galaxies

Revisiting the complex kinematics of ionized gas at the central region of NGC 1068: evidence of an additional active galactic nucleus?

We present a spatially resolved analysis of ionized gas at the nuclear region of the nearby galaxy NGC 1068. While NGC 1068 has been known to have gas outflows driven by its active galactic nucleus (AGN), more complex kinematical signatures were recently reported, which were inconsistent with a rotation or simple biconical outflows. To account for the nature of gas kinematics, we performed a spatially resolved kinematical study, finding a morphologically symmetric pair of approaching and receding gas blobs in the northeast region. The midpoint of the two blobs is located at a distance of 180 pc from the nucleus in the projected plane. The ionized gas at the midpoint shows zero velocity and high velocity dispersion, which are characteristics of an outflow-launching position, as the two sides of a bicone, i.e., approaching and receding outflows are superposed on the line of sight, leading to no velocity shift but high velocity dispersion. We investigate the potential scenario of an additional AGN based on a multiwavelength data set. While there are other possibilities, i.e., X-ray binary or supernova shock, the results from optical spectropolarimetry analysis are consistent with the presence of an additional AGN, which likely originates from a minor merger.

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Astrophysics Of Galaxies

Rivers of Gas I.: Unveiling The Properties of High Redshift Filaments

At high redshift, the cosmic web is widely expected to have a significant impact on the morphologies, dynamics and star formation rates of the galaxies embedded within it, underscoring the need for a comprehensive study of the properties of such a filamentary network. With this goal in mind, we perform an analysis of high- z gas and dark matter (DM) filaments around a Milky Way-like progenitor simulated with the {\sc ramses} adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) code from cosmic scales ( ??1 Mpc) down to the virial radius of its DM halo host ( ??20 kpc at z=4 ). Radial density profiles of both gas and DM filaments are found to have the same functional form, namely a plummer-like profile modified to take into account the wall within which these filaments are embedded. Measurements of the typical filament core radius r 0 from the simulation are consistent with that of isothermal cylinders in hydrostatic equilibrium. Such an analytic model also predicts a redshift evolution for the core radius of filaments in fair agreement with the measured value for DM ( r 0 ??1+z ) ??.18±0.28 ) . Gas filament cores grow as ( r 0 ??1+z ) ??.72±0.26 ) . In both gas and DM, temperature and vorticity sharply drop at the edge of filaments, providing an excellent way to constrain the outer filament radius. When feedback is included the gas temperature and vorticity fields are strongly perturbed, hindering such a measurement in the vicinity of the galaxy. However, the core radius of the filaments as measured from the gas density field is largely unaffected by feedback, and the median central density is only reduced by about 20%.

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Astrophysics Of Galaxies

Role of galactic bars in the formation of spiral arms: A study through orbital and escape dynamics -- I

In the present work we have developed a three-dimensional gravitational model of barred galaxies, in order to study orbital and escape dynamics of the stars inside their central barred region. Our gravitational model is composed of four components, central nucleus, bar, disc and dark matter halo. Furthermore we have analysed the model for two different types of bar potentials. The study has been carried out for a Hamiltonian system and thorough numerical studies have been done in order to categorize regular and chaotic motions of stars. We have seen that escape mechanism has only seen near saddle points ( L 2 , L 4 and L ??2 , L ??4 ) of the Hamiltonian system. Orbital structures in x - y plane indicate that this escaping motion corresponds to the two ends of the bar. Classifications of orbits are found by calculating maximal Lyapunov exponent of the stellar trajectories corresponding to a specific initial condition vector. Poincaré surface section maps are studied in both x - y and x - p x ( p x is the momentum along x - direction) plane to get a complete view of the escape properties of the system in the phase space. Also we studied in detail how the chaotic dynamics varies with mass, length and nature of the bar. We found that under suitable physical conditions the chaos plays a pivotal role behind the formation of grand design or poor spiral pattern for stronger bars and ring structures for weaker bars.

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Astrophysics Of Galaxies

Rotational spectroscopic study and astronomical search for propiolamide in Sgr B2(N)

For all the amides detected in the interstellar medium (ISM), the corresponding nitriles or isonitriles have also been detected in the ISM, some of which have relatively high abundances. Among the abundant nitriles for which the corresponding amide has not yet been detected is cyanoacetylene (HCCCN), whose amide counterpart is propiolamide (HCCC(O)NH 2 ). With the aim of supporting searches for this amide in the ISM, we provide a complete rotational study of propiolamide from 6 GHz to 440 GHz using rotational spectroscopic techniques in the frequency and time domain. We identified and measured more than 5500 distinct frequency lines of propiolamide and obtained accurate sets of spectroscopic parameters for the ground state and the three low-lying excited vibrational states. We used the ReMoCA spectral line survey performed with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array toward the star-forming region Sgr B2(N) to search for propiolamide. We report the nondetection of propiolamide toward the hot cores Sgr B2(N1S) and Sgr B2(N2). We find that propiolamide is at least 50 and 13 times less abundant than acetamide in Sgr B2(N1S) and Sgr B2(N2), respectively, indicating that the abundance difference between both amides is more pronounced by at least a factor of 8 and 2, respectively, than for their corresponding nitriles. Although propiolamide has yet to be included in astrochemical modeling networks, the observed upper limit to the ratio of propiolamide to acetamide seems consistent with the ratios of related species as determined from past simulations.

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Astrophysics Of Galaxies

S-PLUS: LEnticular Galaxies in Stripe 82

This work is a Brazilian-Indian collaboration. It aims at investigating the structuralproperties of Lenticular galaxies in the Stripe 82 using a combination of S-PLUS (Southern Photometric Local Universe Survey) and SDSS data. S-PLUS is a noveloptical multi-wavelength survey which will cover nearly 8000 square degrees of the Southern hemisphere in the next years and the first data release covers the Stripe 82 area. The morphological classification and study of the galaxies' stellar population will be performed combining the Bayesian Spectral type (from BPZ) and Morfometryka (MFMTK) parameters. BPZ and MFMTK are two complementary techniques, since the first one determines the most likely stellar population of a galaxy, in order to obtain its photometric redshift (phot-z), and the second one recovers non-parametric morphological quantities, such as asymmetries and concentration. The combination ofthe two methods allows us to explore the correlation between galaxies shapes (smooth, with spiral arms, etc.) and their stellar contents (old or young population). The preliminary results, presented in this work, show how this new data set opens a new window on our understanding of the nearby universe.

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Astrophysics Of Galaxies

SDSS-IV MANGA: A Star Formation -- Baryonic Mass Relation at Kpc Scales

Star formation rate density, Σ SFR , has shown a remarkable correlation with both components of the baryonic mass at kpc scales (i.e., the stellar mass density, and the molecular gas mass density; Σ ??, and Σ mol , respectively) for galaxies in the nearby Universe. In this study we propose an empirical relation between Σ SFR and the baryonic mass surface density ( Σ b = Σ mol,Av + Σ ??; where Σ mol,Av is the molecular gas density derived from the optical extinction, Av) at kpc scales using the spatially-resolved properties of the MaNGA survey - the largest sample of galaxies observed via Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS, ??8400 objects). We find that Σ SFR tightly correlates with Σ b . Furthermore, we derive an empirical relation between the Σ SFR and a second degree polynomial of Σ b yielding a one-to-one relation between these two observables. Both, Σ b and its polynomial form show a stronger correlation and smaller scatter with respect to Σ SFR than the relations derived using the individual components of Σ b . Our results suggest that indeed these three parameters are physically correlated, suggesting a scenario in which the two components of the baryonic mass regulate the star-formation activity at kpc scales.

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Astrophysics Of Galaxies

SDSS-IV MaNGA: Blueberry Candidates Associated with LSB Galaxies ??Merger or Tidal Dwarf Systems ?

We report here our finding of two new blueberry galaxies using optical IFU spectroscopic data from the MaNGA survey. Both the blueberries are found to be compact ( ??1?? kpc) starburst systems located at the outskirts of Low Surface Brightness (LSB) galaxies. Our blueberries have the lowest stellar masses ??10 5 M ??amongst the locally known blueberry galaxies. We find a significantly large mean metallicity difference ( ??0.5 dex) between the blueberry sources and their associated LSBs. Moreover, the radial metallicity gradients in our blueberries are also different than their respective LSBs - suggesting that these had significantly different metallicity histories. The likelihood of survival of these blueberries as TDGs is analyzed based on their structural and kinematic properties. Our analysis shows that although the two blueberries are stable against internal motions, they would not have survived against the tidal force of the host galaxy. Based on the velocity difference between the host LSBs and the blueberries, it appears that they are compact, starburst systems in their advanced stage of merger with these LSBs situated in a dense environment. Implications of our findings are discussed.

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Astrophysics Of Galaxies

SDSS-IV MaNGA: Radial Gradients in Stellar Population Properties of Early-Type and Late-Type Galaxies

We derive ages, metallicities, and individual element abundances of early- and late-type galaxies (ETGs and LTGs) out to 1.5 R e . We study a large sample of 1900 galaxies spanning 8.6??1.3logM/ M ??in stellar mass, through key absorption features in stacked spectra from the SDSS-IV/MaNGA survey. We use mock galaxy spectra with extended star formation histories to validate our method for LTGs and use corrections to convert the derived ages into luminosity- and mass-weighted quantities. We find flat age and negative metallicity gradients for ETGs and negative age and negative metallicity gradients for LTGs. Age gradients in LTGs steepen with increasing galaxy mass, from ??.05±0.11 log Gyr/R e for the lowest mass galaxies to ??.82±0.08 log Gyr/R e for the highest mass ones. This strong gradient-mass relation has a slope of ??.70±0.18 . Comparing local age and metallicity gradients with the velocity dispersion ? within galaxies against the global relation with ? shows that internal processes regulate metallicity in ETGs but not age, and vice versa for LTGs. We further find that metallicity gradients with respect to local ? show a much stronger dependence on galaxy mass than radial metallicity gradients. Both galaxy types display flat [C/Fe] and [Mg/Fe], and negative [Na/Fe] gradients, whereas only LTGs display gradients in [Ca/Fe] and [Ti/Fe]. ETGs have increasingly steep [Na/Fe] gradients with local ? reaching 6.50±0.78 dex/ log km/s for the highest masses. [Na/Fe] ratios are correlated with metallicity for both galaxy types across the entire mass range in our sample, providing support for metallicity dependent supernova yields.

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