No Arabic abstract
We have conducted a statistical analysis of the ultra-luminous X-ray point sources (ULXs; L(X) >= 10^39 erg/s) in a sample of galaxies selected from the Arp Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. We find a possible enhancement of a factor of ~2-4 in the number of ULXs per blue luminosity for the strongly interacting subset. Such an enhancement would be expected if ULX production is related to star formation, as interacting galaxies tend to have enhanced star formation rates on average. For most of the Arp galaxies in our sample, the total number of ULXs compared to the far-infrared luminosity is consistent with values found earlier for spiral galaxies. This suggests that for these galaxies, ULXs trace recent star formation. However, for the most infrared-luminous galaxies, we find a deficiency of ULXs compared to the infrared luminosity. For these very infrared-luminous galaxies, AGNs may contribute to powering the far-infrared; alternatively, ULXs may be highly obscured in the X-ray in these galaxies and therefore not detected by these Chandra observations. We determined local UV/optical colors within the galaxies in the vicinity of the candidate ULXs using GALEX UV and SDSS optical images. In most cases, the distributions of colors are similar to the global colors of interacting galaxies. However, the u - g and r - i colors at the ULX locations tend to be bluer on average than these global colors, suggesting that ULXs are preferentially found in regions with young stellar populations. In the Arp sample there is a possible enhancement of a factor of ~2 - 5 in the fraction of galactic nuclei that are X-ray bright compared to more normal spirals.
In this paper we present the results of a 20 ks high resolution Chandra X-ray observation of the peculiar galaxy pair NGC 3395/3396, a system at a very early stage of merging, and less evolved than the famous Antennae and Mice merging systems. Previously unpublished ROSAT HRI data are also presented. The point source population and the hot diffuse gas in this system are investigated, and compared with other merging galaxy pairs. 16 X-ray point sources are detected in Arp 270, 7 of which are classified as ULXs (Lx > 10^39 erg/s). From spectral fits and the age of the system it seems likely that these are predominantly high mass X-ray binaries. The diffuse gas emits at a global temperature of ~0.5 keV, consistent with temperatures observed in other interacting systems, and we see no evidence of the starburst-driven hot gaseous outflows seen in more evolved systems such as The Mice and The Antennae. It is likely that these features are absent from Arp 270 as the gas has had insufficient time to break out of the galaxy disks. 32% of the luminosity of Arp 270 arises from the diffuse gas in the system, this is low when compared to later stage merging systems and gives further credence that this is an early stage merger. Comparing the ULX population of Arp 270 to other merging systems, we derive a relationship between the star formation rate of the system, indicated by Lfir, and the number (N(ULX)) and luminosity (Lulx) of its ULX population. We find Nulx proportional to Lfir^0.18 and Lulx proportional to Lfir^0.54. These relationships, coupled with the relation of the point source X-ray luminosity (Lxp) to Lk and Lfir+uv (Colbert et al. 2003), indicate that the ULX sources in an interacting system have contributions from both the old and young stellar populations.
We present the first aperture synthesis unbiased spectral line survey toward an extragalactic object. The survey covered the 40 GHz frequency range between 202 and 242 GHz of the 1.3 mm atmospheric window. We find that 80% of the observed band shows molecular emission, with 73 features identified from 15 molecular species and 6 isotopologues. The 13C isotopic substitutions of HC3N and transitions from H2(18)O, 29SiO, and CH2CO are detected for the first time outside the Galaxy. Within the broad observed band, we estimate that 28% of the total measured flux is due to the molecular line contribution, with CO only contributing 9% to the overall flux. We present maps of the CO emission at a resolution of 2.9x1.9 which, though not enough to resolve the two nuclei, recover all the single-dish flux. The 40 GHz spectral scan has been modelled assuming LTE conditions and abundances are derived for all identified species. The chemical composition of Arp 220 shows no clear evidence of an AGN impact on the molecular emission but seems indicative of a purely starburst-heated ISM. The overabundance of H2S and the low isotopic ratios observed suggest a chemically enriched environment by consecutive bursts of star formation, with an ongoing burst at an early evolutionary stage. The large abundance of water (~10^-5), derived from the isotopologue H2(18)O, as well as the vibrationally excited emission from HC3N and CH3CN are claimed to be evidence of massive star forming regions within Arp 220. Moreover, the observations put strong constraints on the compactness of the starburst event in Arp 220. We estimate that such emission would require ~2-8x10^6 hot cores, similar to those found in the Sgr B2 region in the Galactic center, concentrated within the central 700 pc of Arp 220.
[abridged] We derive photometric redshifts from 17-band optical to mid-IR photometry of 74 robust counterparts to 68 of the 126 submillimetre galaxies (SMGs) selected at 870um by LABOCA observations in the ECDFS. The median photometric redshift of identified SMGs is z=2.2pm0.1, the interquartile range is z=1.8-2.7 and we identify 10 (~15%) high-redshift (z>3) SMGs. We derive a simple redshift estimator for SMGs based on the 3.6 and 8um fluxes, which is accurate to Delta_z~0.4 for SMGs at z<4. A statistical analysis of sources around unidentified SMGs identifies a population of likely counterparts with a redshift distribution peaking at z=2.5pm0.3, which likely comprises ~60% of the unidentified SMGs. This confirms that the bulk of the undetected SMGs are coeval with those detected in the radio/mid-IR. We conclude that ~15% of all the SMGs are below the flux limits of our survey and lie at z>3 and hence ~30% of all SMGs have z>3. We estimate that the full S_870um>4mJy SMG population has a median redshift of 2.5pm0.6. In contrast to previous suggestions we find no significant correlation between S_870um and redshift. The median stellar mass of the SMGs derived from SED fitting is (9.2pm0.9)x10^10Msun and the interquartile range is (4.7-14)x10^10Msun, although we caution that uncertainty in the star-formation histories results in a factor of ~5 uncertainty in these stellar masses. The median characteristic dust temperature of SMGs is 35.9pm1.4K and the interquartile range is 28.5-43.3K. The infrared luminosity function shows that SMGs at z=2-3 typically have higher far-IR luminosities and luminosity density than those at z=1-2. This is mirrored in the evolution of the star-formation rate density (SFRD) for SMGs which peaks at z~2. The maximum contribution of bright SMGs to the global SFRD (~5% for SMGs with S_870um>4mJy; ~50% for SMGs with S_870um>1mJy) also occurs at z~2.
X-ray surveys contain sizable numbers of star forming galaxies, beyond the AGN which usually make the majority of detections. Many methods to separate the two populations are used in the literature, based on X-ray and multiwavelength properties. We aim at a detailed test of the classification schemes and to study the X-ray properties of the resulting samples. We build on a sample of galaxies selected at 1.4 GHz in the VLA-COSMOS survey, classified by Smolcic et al. (2008) according to their optical colours and observed with Chandra. A similarly selected control sample of AGN is also used for comparison. We review some X-ray based classification criteria and check how they affect the sample composition. The efficiency of the classification scheme devised by Smolcic et al. (2008) is such that ~30% of composite/misclassified objects are expected because of the higher X-ray brightness of AGN with respect to galaxies. The latter fraction is actually 50% in the X-ray detected sources, while it is expected to be much lower among X-ray undetected sources. Indeed, the analysis of the stacked spectrum of undetected sources shows, consistently, strongly different properties between the AGN and galaxy samples. X-ray based selection criteria are then used to refine both samples. The radio/X-ray luminosity correlation for star forming galaxies is found to hold with the same X-ray/radio ratio valid for nearby galaxies. Some evolution of the ratio may be possible for sources at high redshift or high luminosity, tough it is likely explained by a bias arising from the radio selection. Finally, we discuss the X-ray number counts of star forming galaxies from the VLA- and C-COSMOS surveys according to different selection criteria, and compare them to the similar determination from the Chandra Deep Fields. The classification scheme proposed here may find application in future works and surveys.
X-ray-emitting coronae of nearby galaxies are expected to be produced either by accretion from the intergalactic medium and/or by various galactic feedback. We herein present a systematical analysis of the Chandra observations of 53 nearby edge-on disk galaxies over a range of 3 orders of magnitude in SFR. Various coronal properties, such as the luminosity, vertical/horizontal extent, and other inferred parameters, are characterized for all the sample galaxies. For galaxies with high enough counting statistics, we also examine the thermal and chemical states of the coronal gas. Here we concentrate on the coronal luminosity (Lx), estimated in 0.5-2keV and within 5 times the diffuse X-ray vertical scale height. We find Lx strongly correlates with the SFR for the whole sample. But the inclusion of Ia SNe in the total energy input (E_SN) gives an even tighter correlation, which may be characterized with a linear relation, Lx=0.5%E_SN, and with a dispersion of 0.45dex. Moreover, the coronal radiation efficiency (eta=Lx/E_SN) shows little correlation with either the stellar mass or the gravitational mass (M_TF, inferred from the rotation velocity), but is significantly correlated with their ratio (M_TF/M_*), which may be expressed as a linear scaling relation eta=0.35%M_TF/M_* for the entire ranges of galaxy parameters. This joint scaling relation suggests that the coronae are self-regulated by the combination of gravitational confinement and feedback. But SN appears to be the primary heating source, because about half of our galaxies are not massive enough to allow for the accretion to play a major role. The commonly low eta further suggests that the bulk of the SN energy likely flows out into large-scale galactic halos for essentially all the galaxies. Such ubiquitous outflows could have profound implications for understanding the ecosystem, hence the evolution of galaxies.