No Arabic abstract
We have studied stellar and gaseous kinematics as well as stellar population properties in the center of the early-type barred galaxy NGC 4245 by means of integral-field spectroscopy. We have found a chemically distinct compact core, more metal-rich by a factor of 2.5 than the bulge, and a ring of young stars with the radius of 300 pc. Current star formation proceeds in this ring; its location corresponds to the inner Lindblad resonance of the large-scale bar. The mean age of stars in the chemically distinct core is significantly younger than the estimate by Sarzi et al. (2005) for the very center, within R=0.25, made with the HST spectroscopy data. We conclude that the `chemically distinct core is in fact an ancient ultra-compact star forming ring with radius less than 100 pc which marks perhaps the past position of the inner Lindblad resonance. In general, the pattern of star formation history in the center of this early-type gas-poor galaxy confirms the predictions of dynamical models for the secular evolution of a stellar-gaseous disk under the influence of a bar.
Cluster formation and gas dynamics in the central regions of barred galaxies are not well understood. This paper reviews the environment of three 10^7 Msun clusters near the inner Lindblad resonance of the barred spiral NGC 1365. The morphology, mass, and flow of HI and CO gas in the spiral and barred regions are examined for evidence of the location and mechanism of cluster formation. The accretion rate is compared with the star formation rate to infer the lifetime of the starburst. The gas appears to move from inside corotation in the spiral region to looping filaments in the interbar region at a rate of ~6 Msun/yr before impacting the bar dustlane somewhere along its length. The gas in this dustlane moves inward, growing in flux as a result of the accretion to ~40 Msun/yr near the ILR. This inner rate exceeds the current nuclear star formation rate by a factor of 4, suggesting continued buildup of nuclear mass for another ~0.5 Gyr. The bar may be only 1-2 Gyr old. Extrapolating the bar flow back in time, we infer that the clusters formed in the bar dustlane outside the central dust ring at a position where an interbar filament currently impacts the lane. The ram pressure from this impact is comparable to the pressure in the bar dustlane, and both are comparable to the pressure in the massive clusters. Impact triggering is suggested. The isothermal assumption in numerical simulations seems inappropriate for the rare fraction parts of spiral and bar gas flows. The clusters have enough lower-mass counterparts to suggest they are part of a normal power law mass distribution. Gas trapping in the most massive clusters could explain their [NeII] emission, which is not evident from the lower-mass clusters nearby.
We present CO(1-0) and CO(2-1) maps of the starburst/Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 2782, obtained with the IRAM interferometer. The CO emission is aligned along the stellar nuclear bar of radius 1 kpc, configured in an elongated structure with two spiral arms at high pitch angle. At the extremity of the nuclear bar, the CO changes direction to trace two more extended spiral features at a lower pitch angle. These are the beginning of two straight dust lanes, which are aligned parallel to an oval distortion, reminiscent of a primary bar, almost perpendicular to the nuclear one. The two embedded bars appear in Spitzer IRAC near-infrared images, and HST color images, although highly obscured by dust in the latter. We compute the torques exerted by the stellar bars on the gas, and find systematically negative average torques down to the resolution limit of the images, providing evidence of gas inflow tantalizingly close to the nucleus of NGC 2782. The observations are well reproduced by numerical simulations, including gas dissipation, which predict the secondary bar decoupling, the formation of an elongated ring at the 1 kpc-radius Inner Lindblad Resonance (ILR) of the primary bar, and the gas inflow to the ILR of the nuclear bar. The presence of molecular gas inside the ILR of the primary bar, transported by a second nuclear bar, is a potential ``smoking gun; the gas there is certainly fueling the central starburst, and in a second step could fuel directly the AGN.
We investigate the relationship between X-ray cooling and star formation in brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs). We present an X-ray spectral analysis of the inner regions, 10-40 kpc, of six nearby cool core clusters (z<0.35) observed with Chandra ACIS. This sample is selected on the basis of the high star formation rate (SFR) observed in the BCGs. We restrict our search for cooling gas to regions that are roughly cospatial with the starburst. We fit single- and multi-temperature mkcflow models to constrain the amount of isobarically cooling intracluster medium (ICM). We find that in all clusters, below a threshold temperature ranging between 0.9 and 3 keV, only upper limits can be obtained. In four out of six objects, the upper limits are significantly below the SFR and in two, namely A1835 and A1068, they are less than a tenth of the SFR. Our results suggests that a number of mechanisms conspire to hide the cooling signature in our spectra. In a few systems the lack of a cooling signature may be attributed to a relatively long delay time between the X-ray cooling and the star burst. However, for A1835 and A1068, where the X-ray cooling time is shorter than the timescale of the starburst, a possible explanation is that the region where gas cools out of the X-ray phase extends to very large radii, likely beyond the core of these systems.
We report here results of high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations of gas flows in barred galaxies, with a focus on gas dynamics in the central kiloparsec. In a single bar with an Inner Lindblad Resonance, we find either near-circular motion of gas in the nuclear ring, or a spiral shock extending towards the galaxy center, depending on the sound speed in the gas. From a simple model of a dynamically-possible doubly barred galaxy with resonant coupling, we infer that the secondary bar is likely to end well inside its corotation. Such a bar cannot create shocks in the gas flow, and therefore will not reveal itself in color maps through straight dust lanes: the gas flows induced by it are different from those caused by the rapidly rotating main bars. In particular, we find that secondary stellar bars are unlikely to increase the mass inflow rate into the galactic nucleus.
The processes taking place in the outermost reaches of spiral disks (the proto-disk) are intimately connected to the build-up of mass and angular momentum in galaxies. The thinness of spiral disks suggests that the activity is mostly quiescent and presumably this region is fed by cool flows coming into the halo from the intergalactic medium. While there is abundant evidence for the presence of a circumgalactic medium (CGM) around disk galaxies as traced by quasar absorption lines, it has been very difficult to connect this material to the outer gas disk. This has been a very difficult transition region to explore because baryon tracers are hard to observe. In particular, HI disks have been argued to truncate at a critical column density N(H) $approx 3times 10^{19}$ cm$^{-2}$ at 30 kpc for an L* galaxy where the gas is vulnerable to the external ionizing background. But new deep observations of nearby L* spirals (e.g. Milky Way, NGC 2997) suggest that HI disks may extend much further than recognised to date, up to 60 kpc at N(H) $approx 10^{18}$ cm$^{-2}$. Motivated by these observations, here we show that a clumpy outer disk of dense clouds or cloudlets is potentially detectable to much larger radii and lower HI column densities than previously discussed. This extended proto-disk component is likely to explain some of the MgII forest seen in quasar spectra as judged from absorption-line column densities and kinematics. We fully anticipate that the armada of new radio facilities and planned HI surveys coming online will detect this extreme outer disk (scree) material. We also propose a variant on the successful Dragonfly technique to go after the very weak H$alpha$ signals expected in the proto-disk region.