We use recently derived ages for 61 Milky Way (MW) globular clusters (GCs) to show that their age-metallicity relation (AMR) can be divided into two distinct, parallel sequences at Fe/H -1.8. ...Approximately one-third of the clusters form an offset sequence that spans the full range in age (∼10.5-13 Gyr), but is more metal rich at a given age by ∼0.6 dex in Fe/H. All but one of the clusters in the offset sequence show orbital properties that are consistent with membership in the MW disc. They are not simply the most metal-rich GCs, which have long been known to have disc-like kinematics, but they are the most metal-rich clusters at all ages. The slope of the mass-metallicity relation (MMR) for galaxies implies that the offset in metallicity of the two branches of the AMR corresponds to a mass decrement of 2 dex, suggesting host galaxy masses of
for GCs that belong to the more metal poor AMR. We suggest that the metal-rich branch of the AMR consists of clusters that formed in situ in the disc, while the metal-poor GCs were formed in relatively low-mass (dwarf) galaxies and later accreted by the MW. The observed AMR of MW disc stars, and of the Large Magellanic Cloud, Small Magellanic Cloud and WLM dwarf galaxies, is shown to be consistent with this interpretation, and the relative distribution of implied progenitor masses for the halo GC clusters is in excellent agreement with the MW subhalo mass function predicted by simulations. A notable implication of the bifurcated AMR is that the identical mean ages and spread in ages, for the metal-rich and metal-poor GCs, are difficult to reconcile with an in situ formation for the latter population.
Interactions between galaxies are predicted to cause gas inflows that can potentially trigger nuclear activity. Since the inflowing material can obscure the central regions of interacting galaxies, a ...potential limitation of previous optical studies is that obscured active galactic nuclei (AGNs) can be missed at various stages along the merger sequence. We present the first large mid-infrared study of AGNs in mergers and galaxy pairs, in order to quantify the incidence of obscured AGNs triggered by interactions. The sample consists of galaxy pairs and post-mergers drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey that are matched to detections by the Wide-Field Infrared Sky Explorer. We find that the fraction of AGNs in the pairs, relative to a mass-, redshift- and environment-matched control sample, increases as a function of decreasing projected separation. This enhancement is most dramatic in the post-merger sample, where we find a factor of 10–20 excess in the AGN fraction compared with the control. Although this trend is in qualitative agreement with results based on optical AGN selection, the mid-infrared-selected AGN excess increases much more dramatically in the post-mergers than is seen for an optical AGN. Our results suggest that energetically dominant optically obscured AGNs become more prevalent in the most advanced mergers, consistent with theoretical predictions.
Galaxy-galaxy interactions are predicted to cause gas inflows leading to enhanced nuclear star formation. This prediction is borne out observationally, and is also supported by the gas-phase ...metallicity dilution in the inner regions of galaxies in close pairs. In this paper we test the further prediction that the gas inflows lead to enhanced accretion on to the central supermassive black hole, triggering activity in the nucleus. Based on a sample of 11 060 Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies with a close companion (r
p < 80 h
−1
70 kpc, ΔV < 200 km s−1), we classify active galactic nuclei (AGN) based either on emission line ratios or on spectral classification as a quasar. The AGN fraction in the close pairs sample is compared to a control sample of 110 600 mass- and redshift-matched control galaxies with no nearby companion. We find a clear increase in the AGN fraction in close pairs of galaxies with projected separations < 40 h
−1
70 kpc by up to a factor of 2.5 relative to the control sample although the enhancement depends on the chosen signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) cut of the sample. The increase in AGN fraction is strongest in equal-mass galaxy pairings, and weakest in the lower mass component of an unequal-mass pairing. The increased AGN fraction at small separations is accompanied by an enhancement in the number of 'composite' galaxies whose spectra are the result of photoionization by both AGN and stars. Our results indicate that AGN activity occurs (at least in some cases) well before final coalescence and concurrently with ongoing star formation. Finally, we find a marked increase at small projected separations of the fraction of pairs in which both galaxies harbour AGN. We demonstrate that the fraction of double AGN exceeds the expected random fraction, indicating that some pairs undergo correlated nuclear activity. We discuss some of the factors that have led to conflicting results in previous studies of AGN in close pairs. Taken together with complementary studies, we favour an interpretation where interactions trigger AGN, but are not the only cause of nuclear activity.
We present a catalog of bulge, disk, and total stellar mass estimates for ~660,000 galaxies in the Legacy area of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data (SDSS) Release 7. These masses are based on a ...homogeneous catalog of g- and r-band photometry described by Simard et al., which we extend here with bulge+disk and Sersic profile photometric decompositions in the SDSS u, i, and z bands. We discuss the methodology used to derive stellar masses from these data via fitting to broadband spectral energy distributions (SEDs), and show that the typical statistical uncertainty on total, bulge, and disk stellar mass is ~0.15 dex. Despite relatively small formal uncertainties, we argue that SED modeling assumptions, including the choice of synthesis model, extinction law, initial mass function, and details of stellar evolution likely contribute an additional 60% systematic uncertainty in any mass estimate based on broadband SED fitting. We discuss several approaches for identifying genuine bulge+disk systems based on both their statistical likelihood and an analysis of their one-dimensional surface-brightness profiles, and include these metrics in the catalogs. Estimates of the total, bulge and disk stellar masses for both normal and dust-free models and their uncertainties are made publicly available here.
In order to investigate the effects of galaxy mergers throughout the interaction sequence, we present a study of 10 800 galaxies in close pairs and a smaller sample of 97 post-mergers identified in ...the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We find that the average central star formation rate (SFR) enhancement (×3.5) and the fraction of starbursts (20 per cent) peak in the post-merger sample. The post-mergers also show a stronger deficit in gas phase metallicity than the closest pairs, being more metal-poor than their control by −0.09 dex. Combined with the observed trends in SFR and the time-scales predicted in merger simulations, we estimate that the post-mergers in our sample have undergone coalescence within the last few hundred Myr. In contrast with the incidence of star-forming galaxies, the frequency of active galactic nuclei (AGN) peaks in the post-mergers, outnumbering AGN in the control sample by a factor of 3.75. Moreover, amongst the galaxies that host an AGN, the black hole accretion rates in the closest pairs and post-mergers are higher by a factor of ∼3 than AGN in the control sample. These results are consistent with a picture in which star formation is initiated early on in the encounter, with AGN activity peaking post-coalescence.
Abstract
The tight correlation between total galaxy stellar mass and star formation rate (SFR) has become known as the star-forming main sequence. Using ∼487 000 spaxels from galaxies observed as ...part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey, we confirm previous results that a correlation also exists between the surface densities of star formation (ΣSFR) and stellar mass (Σ⋆) on kpc scales, representing a ‘resolved’ main sequence. Using a new metric (ΔΣSFR), which measures the relative enhancement or deficit of star formation on a spaxel-by-spaxel basis relative to the resolved main sequence, we investigate the SFR profiles of 864 galaxies as a function of their position relative to the global star-forming main sequence (ΔSFR). For galaxies above the global main sequence (positive ΔSFR) ΔΣSFR is elevated throughout the galaxy, but the greatest enhancement in star formation occurs at small radii (<3 kpc, or 0.5Re). Moreover, galaxies that are at least a factor of 3 above the main sequence show diluted gas phase metallicities out to 2Re, indicative of metal-poor gas inflows accompanying the starbursts. For quiescent/passive galaxies that lie at least a factor of 10 below the star-forming main sequence, there is an analogous deficit of star formation throughout the galaxy with the lowest values of ΔΣSFR in the central 3 kpc. Our results are in qualitative agreement with the ‘compaction’ scenario in which a central starburst leads to mass growth in the bulge and may ultimately precede galactic quenching from the inside-out.
Abstract
We investigate the connection between star formation and molecular gas properties in galaxy mergers at low redshift (z ≤ 0.06). The study we present is based on IRAM 30-m CO(1–0) ...observations of 11 galaxies with a close companion selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The pairs have mass ratios ≤4, projected separations rp ≤ 30 kpc and velocity separations ΔV ≤ 300 km s−1, and have been selected to exhibit enhanced specific star formation rates (sSFRs). We calculate molecular gas (H2) masses, assigning to each galaxy a physically motivated conversion factor αCO, and we derive molecular gas fractions and depletion times. We compare these quantities with those of isolated galaxies from the extended CO Legacy Data base for the GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey sample (xCOLDGASS; Saintonge et al.) with gas quantities computed in an identical way. Ours is the first study which directly compares the gas properties of galaxy pairs and those of a control sample of normal galaxies with rigorous control procedures and for which SFR and H2 masses have been estimated using the same method. We find that the galaxy pairs have shorter depletion times and an average molecular gas fraction enhancement of 0.4 dex compared to the mass matched control sample drawn from xCOLDGASS. However, the gas masses (and fractions) in galaxy pairs and their depletion times are consistent with those of non-mergers whose SFRs are similarly elevated. We conclude that both external interactions and internal processes may lead to molecular gas enhancement and decreased depletion times.
Abstract
Quantitative characterization of galaxy morphology is vital in enabling comparison of observations to predictions from galaxy formation theory. However, without significant overlap between ...the observational footprints of deep and shallow galaxy surveys, the extent to which structural measurements for large galaxy samples are robust to image quality (e.g. depth and spatial resolution) cannot be established. Deep images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Stripe 82 co-adds provide a unique solution to this problem – offering 1.6–1.8 mag improvement in depth with respect to SDSS Legacy images. Having similar spatial resolution to Legacy, the co-adds make it possible to examine the sensitivity of parametric morphologies to depth alone. Using the gim2d surface-brightness decomposition software, we provide public morphology catalogues for 16 908 galaxies in the Stripe 82 ugriz co-adds. Our methods and selection are completely consistent with the Simard et al. (2011) and Mendel et al. (2014) photometric decompositions. We rigorously compare measurements in the deep and shallow images. We find no systematics in total magnitudes and sizes except for faint galaxies in the u band and the brightest galaxies in each band. However, characterization of bulge-to-total fractions is significantly improved in the deep images. Furthermore, statistics used to determine whether single-Sérsic or two-component (e.g. bulge+disc) models are required become more bimodal in the deep images. Lastly, we show that asymmetries are enhanced in the deep images and that the enhancement is positively correlated with the asymmetries measured in Legacy images.
We perform two-dimensional, point-spread-function-convolved, bulge+disk decompositions in the g and r bandpasses on a sample of 1,123,718 galaxies from the Legacy area of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey ...Data Release Seven. Four different decomposition procedures are investigated which make improvements to sky background determinations and object deblending over the standard SDSS procedures that lead to more robust structural parameters and integrated galaxy magnitudes and colors, especially in crowded environments. We use a set of science-based quality assurance metrics, namely, the disk luminosity-size relation, the galaxy color-magnitude diagram, and the galaxy central (fiber) colors to show the robustness of our structural parameters. The best procedure utilizes simultaneous, two-bandpass decompositions. Bulge and disk photometric errors remain below 0.1 mag down to bulge and disk magnitudes of g 19 and r 18.5. We also use and compare three different galaxy fitting models: a pure Sersic model, an nb = 4 bulge + disk model, and a Sersic (free nb ) bulge + disk model. The most appropriate model for a given galaxy is determined by the F-test probability. All three catalogs of measured structural parameters, rest-frame magnitudes, and colors are publicly released here. These catalogs should provide an extensive comparison set for a wide range of observational and theoretical studies of galaxies.
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