No Arabic abstract
The studies of the evolution of galaxies in Galaxy Clusters have as a traditional complication the difficulty in establishing cluster membership of those sources detected in the field of view. The determination of spectroscopic redshifts involves long exposure times when it is needed to reach the cluster peripherical regions of/or clusters at moderately large redshifts, while photometric redshifts often present uncertainties too large to offer significant conclusions. The mapping of the cluster of galaxies with narrow band tunable filters makes it possible to reach large redshifts intervals with an accuracy high enough to establish the source membership of those presenting emission/absorption lines easily identifiable, as H alpha. Moreover, the wavelength scan can include other lines as [NII], [OIII] or $H_{beta}$ allowing to distinguish those sources with strong stellar formation activity and those with an active galactic nuclei. All this makes it possible to estimate the stellar formation rate of the galaxies observed. This, together with ancillary data in other wavelengths may lead to a good estimation of the stellar formation histories. It will shed new light over the galaxy evolution in clusters and will improve our understanding of galaxy evolution, especially in the outer cluster regions, usually less studied and with significant unexploited data that can not be correctly interpreted without redshift determination.
Massive galaxy overdensities at the peak epoch of cosmic star formation provide ideal testbeds for the formation theories of galaxies and large-scale structure. We report the confirmation of two massive galaxy overdensities at $z=2.24$, BOSS1244 and BOSS1542, selected from the MAMMOTH project using Ly$alpha$ absorption from the intergalactic medium over the scales of 15$-$30 $h^{-1}$ Mpc imprinted on the quasar spectra. We use H$alpha$ emitters (HAEs) as the density tracer and identify them using deep narrowband $H_2S1$ and broadband $K_{rm s}$ imaging data obtained with CFHT/WIRCam. In total, 244 and 223 line emitters are detected in these two fields, and $196pm 2$ and $175pm 2$ are expected to be HAEs with an H$alpha$ flux of $> 2.5times 10^{-17}$ erg s$^{-1}$ cm$^{-2}$ (corresponding to an SFR of $>$5 M$_odot$ yr$^{-1}$). The detection rate of HAE candidates suggests an overdensity factor of $delta_{rm gal}=5.6pm0.3$ and $4.9pm0.3$ over the volume of $54times32times32$ cMpc$^3$. The overdensity factor increases $2-3$ times when focusing on the high-density regions of scales $10-15$ cMpc. Interestingly, the HAE density maps reveal that BOSS1244 contains a dominant structure, while BOSS1542 manifests as a giant filamentary structure. We measure the H$alpha$ luminosity functions (HLF), finding that BOSS1244s HLF is nearly identical to that of the general field at the same epoch, while BOSS1542 shows an excess of HAEs with high H$alpha$ luminosity, indicating the presence of enhanced star formation or AGN activity. We conclude that the two massive MAMMOTH overdensities are undergoing a rapid galaxy mass assembly.
We present results from a ~100 ks Chandra observation of the 2QZ Cluster 1004+00 structure at z = 2.23 (hereafter, 2QZ Clus). 2QZ Clus was originally identified as an overdensity of four optically-selected QSOs at z = 2.23 within a 15x15 arcmin^2 region. Narrow-band imaging in the near-IR revealed that the structure contains an additional overdensity of 22 z = 2.23 Halpha-emitting galaxies (HAEs), resulting in 23 unique z = 2.23 HAEs/QSOs. Our Chandra observations reveal that 3 HAEs in addition to the 4 QSOs harbor powerfully accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs), with 2-10 keV luminosities of ~(8-60) x 10^43 ergs/s and X-ray spectral slopes consistent with unobscured AGN. Using a large comparison sample of 210 HAEs in Chandra-COSMOS (C-COSMOS), we find suggestive evidence that the AGN fraction increases with local HAE galaxy density. The 2QZ Clus HAEs reside in a moderately overdense environment (a factor of ~2 times over the field), and after excluding optically-selected QSOs, we find the AGN fraction is a factor of ~3.5^+3.8_-2.2 times higher than C-COSMOS HAEs in similar environments. Using stacking analyses of the Chandra data and Herschel SPIRE observations at 250 um, we respectively estimate mean SMBH accretion rates (Mdot) and star-formation rates (SFRs) for the 2QZ Clus and C-COSMOS samples. We find that the mean 2QZ Clus HAE stacked 2-10 keV luminosity is QSO-like (~6-10 x 10^43 ergs/s), and the implied Mdot/SFR sim (1.6-3.2) x10^-3 is broadly consistent with the local MBH/M* relation and z ~ 2 X-ray selected AGN. The C-COSMOS HAEs are on average an order of magnitude less X-ray luminous and have Mdot/SFR sim (0.2-0.4) x10^-3, comparable to z ~ 1-2 star-forming galaxies with similar mean X-ray luminosities. We estimate that a periodic QSO phase with duty cycle ~2-8% would be sufficient to bring the star-forming galaxies onto the local MBH/M* relation.
We present observations of the portion of the nearby spiral galaxy IC342 using narrow band [SII] and H$alpha$ filters. These observations were carried out in November 2011 with the 2m RCC telescope at Rozhen National Astronomical Observatory in Bulgaria. In this paper we report coordinates, diameters, H$alpha$ and [SII] fluxes for 203 HII regions detected in two fields of view in IC342 galaxy. The number of detected HII regions is 5 times higher than previously known in these two parts of the galaxy.
Recent observations of giant ellipticals and brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) provide tentative evidence for a correlation between the luminosity of the H$alpha$ emitting gas filaments and the strength of feedback associated with the active galactic nucleus (AGN). Motivated by this, we use 3D radiation-hydrodynamic simulations with the code Enzo to examine and quantify the relationship between the observable properties of the H$alpha$ filaments and the kinetic and radiative feedback from supermassive black holes in BCGs. We find that the spatial extent and total mass of the filaments show positive correlations with AGN feedback power and can therefore be used as probes of the AGN activity. We also examine the relationship between the AGN feedback power and velocity dispersion of the H$alpha$ filaments and find that the kinetic luminosity shows statistically significant correlation with the component of the velocity dispersion along the jet axis but not the components perpendicular to it.
We present the results of a narrow-band (H2S1, 2.121/0.021um) imaging search with WFCAM/UKIRT for H-alpha emitters around several potential signposts of rare (10^-7-10^-8 Mpc^-3) over-dense regions at z=2.23: an over-density of QSOs (2QZ cluster), a powerful, high-redshift radio galaxy (HzRG), and a concentration of submillimetre galaxies (SMGs) and optically faint radio galaxies (OFRGs). In total, we detect 137 narrow-band emitter candidates down to emission-line fluxes of 0.5-1 x 10^-16 erg s^-1 cm^-2, across a total area of 0.56 sq. degrees (2.1 x 10^5 comoving Mpc at z=2.23) in these fields. The BzK colours of the emitters suggest that at least 80% of our sample are likely to be H-alpha emitters (HAEs) at z=2.23. This is one of the largest HAE samples known at z>2. We find modest (~3-sigma) local over-densities of emitters associated with all the three targets. In the 2QZ cluster field, the emitters show a striking filamentary structure connecting four of the z=2.23 QSOs extending over 30Mpc (comoving). In the HzRG and SMG/OFRG fields, the structures appear to be smaller and seen only in the vicinities of the targets. The K-band magnitudes and the H-alpha equivalent widths of the emitters are weakly correlated with the over-density of the emitters: emitters in over-dense region are more evolved systems compared to those in under-dense regions at z=2.23. We find several examples of extended HAEs in our target fields, including a striking example with a spatial extent of 7.5 arcsec (60 kpc at z=2.23) in the 2QZ field, suggesting that these are relatively common in high-density regions. We conclude that narrow-band H-alpha surveys are efficient routes to map over-dense regions at high-z and thus to understand the relation between the growth of galaxies and their surrounding large-scale structures.