A Panchromatic View of Galaxies E-Book

Alessandro Boselli

• Herausgeber: Wiley-VCH
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 538

Beschreibung

Describing how to investigate all kinds of galaxies through a multifrequency analysis, this text is divided into three different sections. The first describes the data currently available at different frequencies, from X-rays to UV, optical, infrared and radio millimetric and centimetric, while explaining their physical meaning. In the second section, the author explains how these data can be used to determine physical parameters and quantities, such as mass and temperature. The final section is devoted to describing how the derived quantities can be used in a multifrequency analysis to study such physical processes as the star formation cycle and constrain models of galaxy evolution. As a result, observers will be able to interpret galaxies and their structure.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Half Title page

Related Titles

Title page

Copyright page

Dedication

Preface

Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Galaxies

1.2 A Multifrequency Approach

1.3 The Purpose of this Book

Part One: Emitting Sources and Radiative Processes in Galaxies

Chapter 2: X-ray

2.1 Continuum

Chapter 3: UV-Optical-NIR

3.1 Continuum: Stellar Emission

3.2 Emission Lines

3.3 Absorption Lines

3.4 Molecular Lines

Chapter 4: The Infrared

4.1 Continuum: Dust Emission

4.2 Emission Lines

Chapter 5: Millimeter and Centimeter Radio

5.1 Continuum

5.2 Emission Lines

5.3 Absorption Lines

Part Two: Derived Quantities

Chapter 6: Properties of the Hot X-ray Emitting Gas

6.1 X-ray Luminosity

6.2 Gas Temperature

Chapter 7: Dust Properties

7.1 The Far-IR Luminosity

7.2 Dust Mass and Temperature

Chapter 8: Radio Properties

8.1 Determining the Contribution of the Different Radio Components

8.2 The Radio Luminosity

Chapter 9: The Spectral Energy Distribution

9.1 The Emission in the UV to Near-Infrared Spectral Domain

9.2 The Dust Emission in the Infrared Domain

9.3 The Thermal and Nonthermal Radio Emission

Chapter 10: Spectral Features

10.1 Galaxy Characterization through Emission and Absorption Lines

10.2 Gas Metallicity from Emission Lines

10.3 Stellar Age and Metallicity from Absorption Lines

Chapter 11: Gas Properties

11.1 Gas Density, Mass, and Temperature

Chapter 12: Dust Extinction

12.1 Galactic Extinction

12.2 Internal Attenuation

Chapter 13: Star Formation Tracers

13.1 The Initial Mass Function

13.2 The Star Formation Rate

13.3 The Birthrate Parameter and the Specific Star Formation Rate

13.4 The Star Formation Efficiency and the Gas Consumption Time Scale

13.5 Hydrogen Emission Lines

13.6 UV Stellar Continuum

13.7 Infrared

13.8 Radio Continuum

13.9 Other Indicators

13.10 Population Synthesis Models

Chapter 14: Light Profiles and Structural Parameters

14.1 The Surface Brightness Profile

14.2 Structural Parameters

14.3 Morphological Parameters

Chapter 15: Stellar and Dynamical Masses

15.1 Stellar Mass Determination Using Population Synthesis Models

15.2 Dynamical Mass

Part Three: Constraining Galaxy Evolution

Chapter 16: Statistical Tools

16.1 Galaxy Number Counts

16.2 Luminosity Function

16.3 Luminosity Density

Chapter 17: Scaling Relations

17.1 Spectrophotometric Relations

17.2 Structural Relations

17.3 Kinematical Relations

17.4 Supermassive Black Hole Scaling Relations

Chapter 18: Matter Cycle in Galaxies

18.1 The Star Formation Process

18.2 Feedback

Chapter 19: The Role of the Environment on Galaxy Evolution

19.1 Tracers of Different Environments

19.2 Measuring the Induced Perturbations

Appendix A: Photometric Redshifts and K-Corrections

A.1 The Photometric Redshifts

A.2 The K-Correction

Appendix B: Broad Band Photometry

B.1 Photometric Systems

Appendix C: Physical and Astronomical Constants and Unit Conversions

References

Index

Alessandro Boselli

A Panchromatic View of Galaxies

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The Authors

Dr. Alessandro BoselliPhysics of Galaxies groupLaboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille38, rue Joliot-Curie13388 MarseilleFrance

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© 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Boschstr. 12, 69469 Weinheim, Germany

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to Felice

Preface

In the late eighties, when I first started studying astronomy, the study of galaxies was mainly divided into well defined but quite disjoint research themes related to the spectral range within which the analyzed data were taken. Optical extragalactic astronomy, which was taking advantage of the arrival of the first charge-coupled devices (CCDs) on 4-m class telescopes, was principally devoted to studying stellar populations of intermediate age, while the first generation of near-infrared detectors provided information on the cold stellar component which is the dominant mass component of evolved stellar systems. Radio astronomy, boosted after the construction of the Westerbork radio telescope and the Very Large Array, was principally focused either on the study of the HI gas properties of nearby, late-type systems, or on the radio continuum emission of bright radio galaxies. In the X-ray domain, the Einstein satellite was producing the first images of nearby galaxies while the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), thanks to its all-sky survey, was providing precious data for hundreds of thousands of galaxies still used today to study the properties of the dust frozen in the interstellar medium of all extragalactic sources.

Thanks to the pioneer work of Rob Kennicutt and of my first thesis advisor Giuseppe Gavazzi, it soon became obvious that combining data at different wavelengths was an extremely powerful way to study the physical processes at work in galaxies. I thus had the chance during my time at the University of Milano to be faced with both the technical problems related to the manipulation of sets of data at different wavelengths, in particular in the visible, near- and far-infrared, and centimeter radio, and with their physical interpretation in the framework of galaxy evolution. This expertise was further developed during my PhD at the Observatoire de Paris-Meudon, under the supervision of James Lequeux. There, I learned millimeter astronomy and I had privileged access to infrared astronomy as the person responsible for one of the guaranteed time key projects of the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) mission. My admission at the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille allowed me to be member of the Galaxy Evolution Explorer space mission (GALEX), and thus extend my expertise to the ultraviolet spectral domain. This multiwavelength approach in the study of galaxies is now widely developed and used by many, if not most, astronomers. At the same time, more and more refined models of galaxy evolution are able to reproduce different observables, shinning new light on the process that gave birth to these interesting objects.

This journey made me look at galaxies in a slightly different way than the one commonly described in most of the beautiful textbooks available in the literature, where these fascinating objects are generally divided according to their morphology and studied as separate entities. The multifrequency approach that I previously described forces us to look at all extragalactic sources as undefined objects whose physical properties can be determined and appreciated only after a combined analysis of their data collected at different wavelengths, despite their optical morphology.

To fulfill my work I had to learn how to handle the multifrequency data now available to the community, covering the whole electromagnetic spectrum, from X-rays to centimeter radio. I also had to understand how to derive the most important physical quantities necessary in the study of galaxies. Finding this information, though available in dedicated publications or targeted books, took me several years since it was never collected on a unique source. Furthermore, the experience acquired during these years allowed me to develop a critical view on the most widely used recipes for this exercise, to test the limits of the underlying assumptions, and to quantify their uncertainties. Thus, it seems timely to transfer my expertise to young students or to senior astronomers willing to approach the study of galaxies through a multifrequency analysis. The purpose of this book is to provide to the reader a working tool, useful as a starting point for such a study. I imagine this volume on the reader’s desk with other useful manuals.

Obviously, if I have acquired considerable experience in multifrequency analyses, it has been possible to the detriment of other things. That is why this book should not be used as a reference for detailed and thorough studies of all the specific emitting processes, the nature of the emitting sources, the physical processes acting in all extragalactic systems, or the evolution of galaxies. I therefore warmly recommend the interested reader to refer to more specific publications, such as those I list in the text, for a more accurate use of their own data.

The conception and the first development of this book has been suggested to me by my friend and colleague Veronique Buat, who invited me on many occasions to share my expertise with students and young astronomers visiting our institute. I am thus particularly grateful to Veronique for her invaluable support in this beautiful project. The writing of the text and the widening of the subjects developed here have only been made possible thanks to the inestimable contribution of many of my expert friends that I prompted on several occasions to share stimulating discussions and constructive comments with me. I therefore want to warmly thank Philippe Amram, Samuel Boissier, Mederic Boquien, Albert Bosma, Emily Brageot, Jonathan Braine, Veronique Buat, Barbara Catinella, Andrea Cattaneo, Vassilis Charmandaris, Laure Ciesla, Monica Colpi, George Comte, Luca Cortese, Olga Cucciati, Emanuele Daddi, Daniel Dale, Jean Michel Deharveng, Lise Deharveng, Laura Ferrarese, Michele Fumagalli, Giuseppe Gavazzi, Sebastien Heinis, Olivier Ilbert, James Lequeux, Dario Maccagni, Henry McCracken, Paolo Padovani, Celine Peroux, Henri Plana, Bianca Poggianti, Dimitra Rigopoulou, Tsutomu Takeuchi, Daniel Thomas, Elisa Toloba, Marie Treyer, Ginevra Trinchieri, Bernd Vollmer and Christine Wilson for their help. A special thanks is addressed to Yannick Roehlly for his inestimable help in the preparation of all the figures included in this volume, and to George Comte for a critical and complete reading of the manuscript. I also wish to thank Peppo Gavazzi and James Lequeux who gave me the opportunity to work on this fascinating subject for several years under their supervision, and with whom I still have fruitful collaborations. A special thanks to Peppo, who brought me to discover the world of astronomy in his office and during the huge number of nights that we spent together at the telescope.

I am also grateful to Anja Tschoertner and Ulrike Fuchs of Wiley for their help during the definition of this project and for finding the adapted solutions of the various technical problems that I encountered during the writing of the manuscript. Last, but not least, a special thank to my family, to my wife Beatrice and to my son Felice for their patience during the time I spent writing the book. I dedicate this work to my son Felice.

Marseille, September 2011Alessandro Boselli

Part One

Emitting Sources and Radiative Processes in Galaxies

Chapter 2

X-ray

The first study of the X-ray emission of galaxies has been made possible by the launch of the Einstein Observatory in 1978 [47]. Thanks to the data acquired by following space facilities such as ROSAT [48], ASCA [49], and in particular to the subarcsecond angular resolution of Chandra [50] and the spectral resolution of XMM [51], we now have a relatively clear vision of the X-ray properties of galaxies. Their X-ray emission is either due to compact sources of stellar origin such as X-ray binaries, to resolved sources such as supernovae remnants, or to the extended hot plasma with a relative weight which depends on galaxy type [52–54]. In active galaxies (AGNs, Seyferts) the X-ray emission is dominated by the accretion disk around the central supermassive black hole associated with the AGN [52].

The study of the X-ray binary population is critical for constraining the evolution of the stellar component of galaxies: while low-mass binary systems are associated with the evolved stellar population, massive binaries trace the star formation activity of galaxies. The observation of AGNs is fundamental for understanding the evolution of massive black holes and the feedback of nuclear activity on the parent galaxy, as well as the accretion process, while the study of the metal abundances via X-ray emission lines in the hot plasma and the associated outflows is strictly related to the chemical evolution of the universe [55].