F. Mannucci

Two populations of progenitors for Type Ia supernovae

We use recent observations of the evolution of the Type Ia supernova (SN Ia) rate with redshift, the dependence of the SN Ia rate on the colours of the parent galaxies, and the enhancement of the SN Ia rate in radio-loud early-type galaxies to derive on robust empirical grounds, the delay time distribution (DTD) between the formation of the progenitor star and its explosion as an SN. Our analysis finds: (i) delay times as long as 3–4 Gyr, derived from observations of SNe Ia at high redshift, cannot reproduce the dependence of the SN Ia rate on the colours and on the radio-luminosity of the parent galaxies, as observed in the local Universe; (ii) the comparison between observed SN rates and a grid of theoretical ‘single-population’ DTDs shows that only a few of them are possibly consistent with observations. The most successful models are all predicting a peak of SN explosions soon after star formation and an extended tail in the DTD, and can reproduce the data but only at a modest statistical confidence level; (iii) present data are best matched by a bimodal DTD, in which about 50 per cent of SNe Ia (dubbed ‘prompt’ SNe Ia) explode soon after their stellar birth, in a time of the order of 108 yr, while the remaining 50 per cent (‘tardy’ SNe Ia) have a much wider distribution, well described by an exponential function with a decay time of about 3 Gyr. n n n nThe presence in the DTD of both a strong peak at early times and a prolonged exponential tail, coupled with the well-established bimodal distribution of the decay rate (Δm15) and the systematic difference observed in the expansion velocities of the ejecta of SNe Ia in ellipticals and spirals, suggests the existence of two classes of progenitors. We discuss the cosmological implications of this result and make simple predictions, which are testable with future instrumentation.

A fundamental relation between mass, star formation rate and metallicity in local and high-redshift galaxies

We show that the mass-metallicity relation observed in the local universe is due to a more general relation between stellar mass M*, gas-phase metallicity and SFR. Local galaxies define a tight surface in this 3D space, the Fundamental Metallicity Relation (FMR), with a small residual dispersion of ~0.05 dex in metallicity, i.e, ~12%. At low stellar mass, metallicity decreases sharply with increasing SFR, while at high stellar mass, metallicity does not depend on SFR. High redshift galaxies, up to z~2.5 are found to follow the same FMR defined by local SDSS galaxies, with no indication of evolution. The evolution of the mass-metallicity relation observed up to z=2.5 is due to the fact that galaxies with progressively higher SFRs, and therefore lower metallicities, are selected at increasing redshifts, sampling different parts of the same FMR. By introducing the new quantity mu_alpha=log(M*)-alpha log(SFR), with alpha=0.32, we define a projection of the FMR that minimizes the metallicity scatter of local galaxies. The same quantity also cancels out any redshift evolution up to z~2.5, i.e, all galaxies have the same range of values of mu_0.32. At z>2.5, evolution of about 0.6 dex off the FMR is observed, with high-redshift galaxies showing lower metallicities. The existence of the FMR can be explained by the interplay of infall of pristine gas and outflow of enriched material. The former effect is responsible for the dependence of metallicity with SFR and is the dominant effect at high-redshift, while the latter introduces the dependence on stellar mass and dominates at low redshift. The combination of these two effects, together with the Schmidt-Kennicutt law, explains the shape of the FMR and the role of mu_0.32. The small metallicity scatter around the FMR supports the smooth infall scenario of gas accretion in the local universe.

THE AFTERGLOWS OF SWIFT-ERA GAMMA-RAY BURSTS. I. COMPARING PRE-SWIFT AND SWIFT-ERA LONG/SOFT (TYPE II) GRB OPTICAL AFTERGLOWS

We have gathered optical photometry data from the literature on a large sample of Swift-era gamma-ray burst (GRB) afterglows including GRBs up to 2009 September, for a total of 76 GRBs, and present an additional three pre-Swift GRBs not included in an earlier sample. Furthermore, we publish 840 additional new photometry data points on a total of 42 GRB afterglows, including large data sets for GRBs 050319, 050408, 050802, 050820A, 050922C, 060418, 080413A, and 080810. We analyzed the light curves of all GRBs in the sample and derived spectral energy distributions for the sample with the best data quality, allowing us to estimate the host-galaxy extinction. We transformed the afterglow light curves into an extinction-corrected z = 1 system and compared their luminosities with a sample of pre-Swift afterglows. The results of a former study, which showed that GRB afterglows clustered and exhibited a bimodal distribution in luminosity space, are weakened by the larger sample. We found that the luminosity distribution of the two afterglow samples (Swift-era and pre-Swift) is very similar, and that a subsample for which we were not able to estimate the extinction, which is fainter than the main sample, can be explained by assuming a moderate amount of line-of-sight host extinction. We derived bolometric isotropic energies for all GRBs in our sample, and found only a tentative correlation between the prompt energy release and the optical afterglow luminosity at 1 day after the GRB in the z = 1 system. A comparative study of the optical luminosities of GRB afterglows with echelle spectra (which show a high number of foreground absorbing systems) and those without, reveals no indication that the former are statistically significantly more luminous. Furthermore, we propose the existence of an upper ceiling on afterglow luminosities and study the luminosity distribution at early times, which was not accessible before the advent of the Swift satellite. Most GRBs feature afterglows that are dominated by the forward shock from early times on. Finally, we present the first indications of a class of long GRBs, which form a bridge between the typical high-luminosity, high-redshift events and nearby low-luminosity events (which are also associated with spectroscopic supernovae) in terms of energetics and observed redshift distribution, indicating a continuous distribution overall.

GRB 090423 at a redshift of z ≈ 8.1

Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are produced by rare types of massive stellar explosion. Their rapidly fading afterglows are often bright enough at optical wavelengths that they are detectable at cosmological distances. Hitherto, the highest known redshift for a GRB was z = 6.7 (ref. 1), for GRBu2009080913, and for a galaxy was z = 6.96 (ref. 2). Here we report observations of GRBu2009090423 and the near-infrared spectroscopic measurement of its redshift, z = . This burst happened when the Universe was only about 4 per cent of its current age. Its properties are similar to those of GRBs observed at low/intermediate redshifts, suggesting that the mechanisms and progenitors that gave rise to this burst about 600,000,000u2009years after the Big Bang are not markedly different from those producing GRBs about 10,000,000,000u2009years later.

THE AFTERGLOWS OF SWIFT-ERA GAMMA-RAY BURSTS. II. TYPE I GRB VERSUS TYPE II GRB OPTICAL AFTERGLOWS*

We use a large sample of GRB afterglow and prompt-emission data (adding further GRB afterglow observations in this work) to compare the optical afterglows (or the lack thereof) of Type I GRBs with those of Type II GRBs. In comparison to the afterglows of Type II GRBs, we find that those of Type I GRBs have a lower average luminosity and show an intrinsic spread of luminosities at least as wide. From late and deep upper limits on the optical transients, we establish limits on the maximum optical luminosity of any associated supernova, confirming older works and adding new results. We use deep upper limits on Type I GRB optical afterglows to constrain the parameter space of possible mini-SN emission associated with a compact-object merger. Using the prompt emission data, we search for correlations between the parameters of the prompt emission and the late optical afterglow luminosities. We find tentative correlations between the bolometric isotropic energy release and the optical afterglow luminosity at a fixed time after trigger (positive), and between the host offset and the luminosity (negative), but no significant correlation between the isotropic energy release and the duration of the GRBs. We also discuss three anomalous GRBs, GRB 060505, GRB 060614, and GRB 060121, in the light of their optical afterglow luminosities. (Abridged)

Gas accretion as the origin of chemical abundance gradients in distant galaxies

It has recently been suggested that galaxies in the early Universe could have grown through the accretion of cold gas, and that this may have been the main driver of star formation and stellar mass growth. Because the cold gas is essentially primordial, it has a very low abundance of elements heavier than helium (referred to as metallicity). If funnelled to the centre of a galaxy, it will result in the central gas having an overall lower metallicity than gas further from the centre, because the gas further out has been enriched by supernovae and stellar winds, and not diluted by the primordial gas. Here we report chemical abundances across three rotationally supported star-forming galaxies at redshift zu2009≈u20093, only 2u2009Gyr after the Big Bang. We find ‘inverse’ gradients, with the central, star-forming regions having lower metallicities than less active ones, which is opposite to what is seen in local galaxies. We conclude that the central gas has been diluted by the accretion of primordial gas, as predicted by ‘cold flow’ models.

The metallicity of the long GRB hosts and the fundamental metallicity relation of low-mass galaxies

We investigate the metallicity properties of host galaxies of long gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) in the light of the fundamental metallicity relation (FMR), the tight dependence of metallicity on mass and star formation rate (SFR) recently discovered for Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies with stellar masses above 10 9.2 M� . As most of the GRB hosts have masses below this limit, the FMR can only be used after an extension towards lower masses. With this aim, we study the FMR for galaxies with masses down to ∼10 8.3 M� , finding that the FMR does extend smoothly at lower masses, albeit with a much larger scatter. We then compare the resulting FMR with the metallicity properties of 18 host galaxies of long GRBs. While the GRB hosts show a systematic offset with respect to the mass–metallicity relation, they are fully consistent with the FMR. This shows that the difference with the mass–metallicity relation is due to higher than average SFRs and that GRBs with optical afterglows do not preferentially select low-metallicity hosts among the star-forming galaxies. The apparent low metallicity is therefore a consequence of the occurrence of a long GRB in low-mass, actively star-forming galaxies, known to dominate the current cosmic SFR.

The evolution of the dust and gas content in galaxies

We use deep Herschel observations taken with both PACS and SPIRE imaging cameras to estimate the dust mass of a sample of galaxies extracted from the GOODS-S, GOODS-N and the COSMOS fields. We divide the redshift–stellar mass (Mstar)–star formation rate (SFR) parameter space into small bins and investigate average properties over this grid. In the first part of the work we investigate the scaling relations between dust mass, stellar mass and SFR out to zxa0=xa02.5. No clear evolution of the dust mass with redshift is observed at a given SFR and stellar mass. We find a tight correlation between the SFR and the dust mass, which, under reasonableassumptions, is likely a consequence of the Schmidt-Kennicutt (S-K) relation. The previously observed correlation between the stellar content and the dust content flattens or sometimes disappears when considering galaxies with the same SFR. Our finding suggests that most of the correlation between dust mass and stellar mass obtained by previous studies is likely a consequence of the correlation between the dust mass and the SFR combined with the main sequence, i.e., the tight relation observed between the stellar mass and the SFR and followed by the majority of star-forming galaxies. We then investigate the gas content as inferred from dust mass measurements. We convert the dust mass into gas mass by assuming that the dust-to-gas ratio scales linearly with the gas metallicity (as supported by many observations). For normal star-forming galaxies (on the main sequence) the inferred relation between the SFR and the gas mass (integrated S-K relation) broadly agrees with the results of previous studies based on CO measurements, despite the completely different approaches. We observe that all galaxies in the sample follow, within uncertainties, the same S-K relation. However, when investigated in redshift intervals, the S-K relation shows a moderate, but significant redshift evolution. The bulk of the galaxy population at zxa0~xa02 converts gas into stars with an efficiency (star formation efficiency, SFE = SFR/Mgas, equal to the inverse of the depletion time) about 5 times higher than at zxa0~xa00. However, it is not clear what fraction of such variation of the SFE is due to an intrinsic redshift evolution and what fraction is simply a consequence of high-z galaxies having, on average, higher SFR, combined with the super-linear slope of the S-K relation (while other studies find a linear slope). We confirm that the gas fraction (fgasxa0=xa0Mgas/(Mgasxa0+xa0Mstar)) decreases with stellar mass and increases with the SFR. We observe no evolution with redshift once Mstarand SFR are fixed. We explain these trends by introducing a universal relation between gas fraction, stellar mass and SFR that does not evolve with redshift, at least out to zxa0~xa02.5. Galaxies move across this relation as their gas content evolves across the cosmic epochs. We use the 3D fundamental fgas–Mstar–SFR relation, along with the evolution of the main sequence with redshift, to estimate the evolution of the gas fraction in the average population of galaxies as a function of redshift and as a function of stellar mass: we find that Mstarxa0xa0≳xa01011xa0xa0M⊙ galaxies show the strongest evolution at zxa0≳xa01.3 and a flatter trend at lower redshift, while fgas decreases more regularly over the entire redshift range probed in Mstar ≲xa01011xa0xa0M⊙ galaxies, in agreement with a downsizing scenario.

Metallicity evolution, metallicity gradients, and gas fractions at z ~ 3.4

This work was funded by the Marie Curie Initial Training Network ELIXIR 214227 of the European Commission. We also acknowledge partial support by INAF. Alessandro Marconi acknowledges support from grant PRIN-MIUR 2010-2011 “The dark Universe and the cosmic evolution of baryons: from current surveys to Euclid”.

Dynamical properties of AMAZE and LSD galaxies from gas kinematics and the Tully-Fisher relation at z ∼3

We present a SINFONI integral-field kinematical study of 33 galaxies at z ∼ 3 from the AMAZE and LSD projects, which are aimed at studying metallicity and dynamics of high-redshift galaxies. The number of galaxies analyzed in this paper constitutes a significant improvement over existing data in the literature, and this is the first time that a dynamical analysis is obtained for a relatively large sample of galaxies at z ∼ 3. Eleven galaxies show ordered rotational motions (∼30% of the sample). In these cases we estimate dynamical masses by modeling the gas kinematics with rotating disks and exponential mass distributions. We find dynamical masses .