ABSTRACT
We use the eagle simulations to study the connection between the quenching time-scale, τQ, and the physical mechanisms that transform star-forming galaxies into passive galaxies. By ...quantifying τQ in two complementary ways – as the time over which (i) galaxies traverse the green valley on the colour–mass diagram, or (ii) leave the main sequence of star formation and subsequently arrive on the passive cloud in specific star formation rate (SSFR)-mass space – we find that the τQ distribution of high-mass centrals, low-mass centrals, and satellites are divergent. In the low stellar mass regime where M⋆ < 109.6 M⊙, centrals exhibit systematically longer quenching time-scales than satellites (≈4 Gyr compared to ≈2 Gyr). Satellites with low stellar mass relative to their halo mass cause this disparity, with ram pressure stripping quenching these galaxies rapidly. Low-mass centrals are quenched as a result of stellar feedback, associated with long τQ ≳ 3 Gyr. At intermediate stellar masses where $10^{9.7}\lt M_{\star }\lt 10^{10.3}\, \rm M_{\odot }$, τQ are the longest for both centrals and satellites, particularly for galaxies with higher gas fractions. At $M_{\star }\gtrsim 10^{10.3}\, \rm M_{\odot }$, galaxy merger counts and black hole activity increase steeply for all galaxies. Quenching time-scales for centrals and satellites decrease with stellar mass in this regime to τQ ≲ 2 Gyr. In anticipation of new intermediate redshift observational galaxy surveys, we analyse the passive and star-forming fractions of galaxies across redshift, and find that the τQ peak at intermediate stellar masses is responsible for a peak (inflection point) in the fraction of green valley central (satellite) galaxies at z ≈ 0.5–0.7.
We present 12CO (2-1) data of three Virgo spirals -- NGC 4330, NGC 4402 and NGC 4522 obtained using the Submillimeter Array. These three galaxies show clear evidence of ram pressure stripping due to ...the cluster medium as found in previous H i imaging studies. Using the high-resolution CO data, we investigate how the properties of the inner molecular gas disc change while a galaxy is undergoing H i stripping in the cluster. At given sensitivity limits, we do not find any clear signs of molecular gas stripping. However, both its morphology and kinematics appear to be quite disturbed as those of H i. Morphological peculiarities present in the molecular and atomic gas are closely related with each other, suggesting that the molecular gas can be also affected by strong intracluster medium (ICM) pressure even if it is not stripped. CO is found to be modestly enhanced along the upstream sides in these galaxies, which may change the local star formation activity in the disc. Indeed, the distribution of H alpha emission, a tracer of recent star formation, well coincides with that of the molecular gas, revealing enhancements near the local CO peak or along the CO compression. FUV and H alpha share some properties in common, but FUV is always more extended than CO/H alpha in the three galaxies, implying that the star-forming disc is rapidly shrinking as the molecular gas properties have changed. We discuss how ICM pressure affects dense molecular gas and hence star formation properties while diffuse atomic gas is being removed from a galaxy.
ABSTRACT
In this work, we examine the classification accuracy and robustness of a state-of-the-art semi-supervised learning (SSL) algorithm applied to the morphological classification of radio ...galaxies. We test if SSL with fewer labels can achieve test accuracies comparable to the supervised state of the art and whether this holds when incorporating previously unseen data. We find that for the radio galaxy classification problem considered, SSL provides additional regularization and outperforms the baseline test accuracy. However, in contrast to model performance metrics reported on computer science benchmarking data sets, we find that improvement is limited to a narrow range of label volumes, with performance falling off rapidly at low label volumes. Additionally, we show that SSL does not improve model calibration, regardless of whether classification is improved. Moreover, we find that when different underlying catalogues drawn from the same radio survey are used to provide the labelled and unlabelled data sets required for SSL, a significant drop in classification performance is observed, highlighting the difficulty of applying SSL techniques under data set shift. We show that a class-imbalanced unlabelled data pool negatively affects performance through prior probability shift, which we suggest may explain this performance drop, and that using the Fréchet distance between labelled and unlabelled data sets as a measure of data set shift can provide a prediction of model performance, but that for typical radio galaxy data sets with labelled sample volumes of $\mathcal {O}(10^3)$, the sample variance associated with this technique is high and the technique is in general not sufficiently robust to replace a train–test cycle.
We use SDSS+GALEX+Galaxy Zoo data to study the quenching of star formation in low-redshift galaxies. We show that the green valley between the blue cloud of star-forming galaxies and the red sequence ...of quiescent galaxies in the colour-mass diagram is not a single transitional state through which most blue galaxies evolve into red galaxies. Rather, an analysis that takes morphology into account makes clear that only a small population of blue early-type galaxies move rapidly across the green valley after the morphologies are transformed from disc to spheroid and star formation is quenched rapidly. In contrast, the majority of blue star-forming galaxies have significant discs, and they retain their late-type morphologies as their star formation rates decline very slowly. We summarize a range of observations that lead to these conclusions, including UV-optical colours and halo masses, which both show a striking dependence on morphological type. We interpret these results in terms of the evolution of cosmic gas supply and gas reservoirs. We conclude that late-type galaxies are consistent with a scenario where the cosmic supply of gas is shut off, perhaps at a critical halo mass, followed by a slow exhaustion of the remaining gas over several Gyr, driven by secular and/or environmental processes. In contrast, early-type galaxies require a scenario where the gas supply and gas reservoir are destroyed virtually instantaneously, with rapid quenching accompanied by a morphological transformation from disc to spheroid. This gas reservoir destruction could be the consequence of a major merger, which in most cases transforms galaxies from disc to elliptical morphology, and mergers could play a role in inducing black hole accretion and possibly active galactic nuclei feedback.
The environmental effect is commonly used to explain the excess of gas-poor galaxies in galaxy clusters. Meanwhile, the presence of gas-poor galaxies at cluster outskirts, where galaxies have not ...spent enough time to feel the cluster environmental effect, hints at the presence of preprocessing. Using cosmological hydrodynamic simulations on 16 clusters, we investigate the mechanisms of gas depletion of galaxies found inside clusters. The gas-depletion mechanisms can be categorized into three channels based on where and when they took place. First, 34% of our galaxies are gas poor before entering clusters ("preprocessing"). They are mainly satellites that have undergone the environmental effect inside group halos. Second, 43% of the sample quickly became gas deficient in clusters before the first pericentric pass ("fast cluster processing"). Some of them were group satellites that are low in gas at the time of cluster entry compared to the galaxies directly coming from the field. Even the galaxies with large gas fractions take this channel if they fall into massive clusters ( 1014.5 M ) or approach cluster centers through radial orbits. Third, 24% of our sample retain gas even after their first pericentric pass ("slow cluster processing") as they fall into the less massive clusters or have circular orbits. The relative importance of each channel varies with a cluster's mass, while the exact degree of significance is subject to large uncertainties. Group preprocessing accounts for one-third of the total gas depletion, but it also determines the gas fraction of galaxies at their cluster entry, which in turn determines whether a galaxy should take the fast or slow cluster processing.
Abstract We determine the low-redshift X-ray luminosity function, active black hole mass function (BHMF), and Eddington ratio distribution function (ERDF) for both unobscured (Type 1) and obscured ...(Type 2) active galactic nuclei (AGNs), using the unprecedented spectroscopic completeness of the BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey (BASS) data release 2. In addition to a straightforward 1/ V max approach, we also compute the intrinsic distributions, accounting for sample truncation by employing a forward-modeling approach to recover the observed BHMF and ERDF. As previous BHMFs and ERDFs have been robustly determined only for samples of bright, broad-line (Type 1) AGNs and/or quasars, ours are the first directly observationally constrained BHMF and ERDF of Type 2 AGNs. We find that after accounting for all observational biases, the intrinsic ERDF of Type 2 AGNs is significantly more skewed toward lower Eddington ratios than the intrinsic ERDF of Type 1 AGNs. This result supports the radiation-regulated unification scenario, in which radiation pressure dictates the geometry of the dusty obscuring structure around an AGN. Calculating the ERDFs in two separate mass bins, we verify that the derived shape is consistent, validating the assumption that the ERDF (shape) is mass-independent. We report the local AGN duty cycle as a function of mass and Eddington ratio, by comparing the BASS active BHMF with the local mass function for all supermassive black holes. We also present the log N − log S of the Swift/BAT 70 month sources.
We present deep Chandra X-ray observations of the core of IC 2497, the galaxy associated with Hanny's Voorwerp and hosting a fading AGN. We find extended soft X-ray emission from hot gas around the ...low intrinsic luminosity (unobscured) AGN (L
bol ∼ 1042–1044 erg s−1). The temperature structure in the hot gas suggests the presence of a bubble or cavity around the fading AGN (
${{\rm {E}}}_{\rm bub} \sim 10^{54}{--}10^{55}$
erg). A possible scenario is that this bubble is inflated by the fading AGN, which after changing accretion state is now in a kinetic mode. Other possibilities are that the bubble has been inflated by the past luminous quasar (L
bol ∼ 1046 erg s−1), or that the temperature gradient is an indication of a shock front from a superwind driven by the AGN. We discuss the possible scenarios and the implications for the AGN–host galaxy interaction, as well as an analogy between AGN and X-ray binaries lifecycles. We conclude that the AGN could inject mechanical energy into the host galaxy at the end of its lifecycle, and thus provide a source for mechanical feedback, in a similar way as observed for X-ray binaries.
We use a phenomenological model to show that black hole growth in the local universe ( ) can be described by two separate, mass-independent Eddington ratio distribution functions (ERDFs). We assume ...that black holes can be divided into two independent groups: those with radiatively efficient accretion, primarily hosted by optically blue and green galaxies, and those with radiatively inefficient accretion, which are mainly found in red galaxies. With observed galaxy stellar mass functions as input, we show that the observed active galactic nucleus (AGN) luminosity functions can be reproduced by using mass-independent, broken power-law-shaped ERDFs. We use the observed hard X-ray and 1.4 GHz radio luminosity functions to constrain the ERDF for radiatively efficient and inefficient AGNs, respectively. We also test alternative ERDF shapes and mass-dependent models. Our results are consistent with a mass-independent AGN fraction and AGN hosts being randomly drawn from the galaxy population. We argue that the ERDF is not shaped by galaxy-scale effects, but by how efficiently material can be transported from the inner few parsecs to the accretion disc. Our results are incompatible with the simplest form of mass quenching where massive galaxies host higher accretion rate AGNs. Furthermore, if reaching a certain Eddington ratio is a sufficient condition for maintenance mode, it can occur in all red galaxies, not just the most massive ones.
ABSTRACT
We have conducted 22 GHz radio imaging at 1 arcsec resolution of 100 low-redshift AGN selected at 14–195 keV by the Swift-BAT. We find a radio core detection fraction of 96 per cent, much ...higher than lower frequency radio surveys. Of the 96 radio-detected AGN, 55 have compact morphologies, 30 have morphologies consistent with nuclear star formation, and 11 have sub-kpc to kpc-scale jets. We find that the total radio power does not distinguish between nuclear star formation and jets as the origin of the radio emission. For 87 objects, we use optical spectroscopy to test whether AGN physical parameters are distinct between radio morphological types. We find that X-ray luminosities tend to be higher if the 22 GHz morphology is jet-like, but find no significant difference in other physical parameters. We find that the relationship between the X-ray and core radio luminosities is consistent with the LR/LX ∼ 10−5 of coronally active stars. We further find that the canonical fundamental planes of black hole activity systematically overpredict our radio luminosities, particularly for objects with star formation morphologies.
We present a new fast radio burst (FRB) at 920 MHz discovered during commensal observations conducted with the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) as part of the Commensal Real-time ...ASKAP Fast Transients (CRAFT) survey. FRB 191001 was detected at a dispersion measure (DM) of 506.92(4) pc cm−3 and its measured fluence of 143(15) Jy ms is the highest of the bursts localized to host galaxies by ASKAP to date. The subarcsecond localization of the FRB provided by ASKAP reveals that the burst originated in the outskirts of a highly star-forming spiral in a galaxy pair at redshift z = 0.2340(1). Radio observations show no evidence for a compact persistent radio source associated with the FRB 191001 above a flux density of 15 Jy. However, we detect diffuse synchrotron radio emission from the disk of the host galaxy that we ascribe to ongoing star formation. FRB 191001 was also detected as an image-plane transient in a single 10 s snapshot with a flux density of 19.3 mJy in the low-time-resolution visibilities obtained simultaneously with CRAFT data. The commensal observation facilitated a search for repeating and slowly varying radio emissions 8 hr before and 1 hr after the burst. We found no variable radio emission on timescales ranging from 1 ms to 1.4 hr. We report our upper limits and briefly review FRB progenitor theories in the literature that predict radio afterglows. Our data are still only weakly constraining of any afterglows at the redshift of the FRB. Future commensal observations of more nearby and bright FRBs will potentially provide stronger constraints.
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