No Arabic abstract
We present a method, based on Bayesian statistics, to fit the dust emission parameters in the far-infrared and submillimeter wavelengths. The method estimates the dust temperature and spectral emissivity index, plus their relationship, taking into account properly the statistical and systematic uncertainties. We test it on three sets of simulated sources detectable by the Herschel Space Observatory in the PACS and SPIRE spectral bands (70-500 micron), spanning over a wide range of dust temperatures. The simulated observations are a one-component Interstellar Medium, and two two-component sources, both warm (HII regions) and cold (cold clumps). We first define a procedure to identify the better model, then we recover the parameters of the model and measure their physical correlations by means of a Monte Carlo Markov Chain algorithm adopting multi-variate Gaussian priors. In this process we assess the reliability of the model recovery, and of parameters estimation. We conclude that the model and parameters are properly recovered only under certain circumstances, and that false models may be derived in some case. We applied the method to a set of 91 starless cold clumps in an inter-arm region of the Galactic Plane with low star formation activity, observed by Herschel in the Hi-GAL survey. Our results are consistent with a temperature independent spectral index.
We present new far-infrared (FIR) images of the edge-on starburst galaxy NGC253 obtained with the Far-Infrared Surveyor (FIS) onboard AKARI at wavelengths of 90 um and 140 um. We have clearly detected FIR dust emission extended in the halo of the galaxy; there are two filamentary emission structures extending from the galactic disk up to 9 kpc in the northern and 6 kpc in the northwestern direction. From its spatial coincidence with the X-ray plasma outflow, the extended FIR emission is very likely to represent outflowing dust entrained by superwinds. The ratios of surface brightness at 90 um to that at 140 um suggest that the temperatures of the dust in the halo are getting higher in the regions far from the disk, implying that there exist extra dust heating sources in the halo of the galaxy.
Dust properties are very likely affected by the environment in which dust grains evolve. For instance, some analyses of cold clumps (7 K- 17 K) indicate that the aggregation process is favored in dense environments. However, studying warm (30 K-40 K) dust emission at long wavelength ($lambda$$>$300 $mu$m) has been limited because it is difficult to combine far infared-to-millimeter (FIR-to-mm) spectral coverage and high angular resolution for observations of warm dust grains. Using Herschel data from 70 to 500 $mu$m, which are part of the Herschel infrared Galactic (Hi-GAL) survey combined with 1.1 mm data from the Bolocam Galactic Plane Survey (BGPS), we compared emission in two types of environments: ultra-compact HII (UCHII) regions, and cold molecular clumps (denoted as cold clumps). With this comparison we tested dust emission models in the FIR-to-mm domain that reproduce emission in the diffuse medium, in these two environments (UCHII regions and cold clumps). We also investigated their ability to predict the dust emission in our Galaxy. We determined the emission spectra in twelve UCHII regions and twelve cold clumps, and derived the dust temperature (T) using the recent two-level system (TLS) model with three sets of parameters and the so-called T-$beta$ (temperature-dust emissvity index) phenomenological models, with $beta$ set to 1.5, 2 and 2.5. We tested the applicability of the TLS model in warm regions for the first time. This analysis indicates distinct trends in the dust emission between cold and warm environments that are visible through changes in the dust emissivity index. However, with the use of standard parameters, the TLS model is able to reproduce the spectral behavior observed in cold and warm regions, from the change of the dust temperature alone, whereas a T-$beta$ model requires $beta$ to be known.
A possible source of $gamma$-ray photons observed from the jets of blazars is inverse Compton scattering by relativistic electrons of infrared seed photons from a hot, dusty torus in the nucleus. We use observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope to search for signatures of such dust in the infrared spectra of four $gamma$-ray bright blazars, the quasars 4C 21.35, CTA102, and PKS 1510$-$089, and the BL Lacertae object ON231. The spectral energy distribution (SED) of 4C 21.35 contains a prominent infrared excess indicative of dust emission. After subtracting a non-thermal component with a power-law spectrum, we fit a dust model to the residual SED. The model consists of a blackbody with temperature $sim1200$ K, plus a much weaker optically thin component at $sim660$ K. The total luminosity of the thermal dust emission is $7.9pm0.2 times 10^{45}$ erg s$^{-1}$. If the dust lies in an equatorial torus, the density of IR photons from the torus is sufficient to explain the $gamma$-ray flux from 4C 21.35 as long as the scattering occurs within a few parsecs of the central engine. We also report a tentative detection of dust in the quasar CTA102, in which the luminosity of the infrared excess is $7 pm 2 times 10^{45}$ erg s$^{-1}$. However, in CTA102 the far-IR spectra are too noisy to detect the $10 mu$m silicate feature. Upper limits to the luminosity from thermal emission from dust in PKS 1510-089, and ON231, are, $2.3times10^{45}$, and $6.6times10^{43}$ erg s$^{-1}$, respectively. These upper limits do not rule out the possibility of inverse Compton up-scattering of IR photons to $gamma$-ray energies in these two sources. The estimated covering factor of the hot dust in 4C 21.35, 22%, is similar to that of non-blazar quasars; however, 4C 21.35 is deficient in cooler dust.
We investigate the evolution of far-IR CO emission from protostars observed with Herschel/PACS for 50 sources from the combined sample of HOPS and DIGIT Herschel key programs. From the uniformly sampled spectral energy distributions, we computed $L_{rm{bol}}$, $T_{rm{bol}}$ and $L_{rm {bol}}/L_{rm {smm}}$ for these sources to search for correlations between far-IR CO emission and protostellar properties. We find a strong and tight correlation between far-IR CO luminosity ($L^{rm fir}_{rm CO}$) and the bolometric luminosity ($L_{rm{bol}}$) of the protostars with $L^{rm fir}_{rm CO}$ $propto$ $L_{rm{bol}}^{0.7}$. We, however, do not find a strong correlation between $L^{rm fir}_{rm CO}$ and protostellar evolutionary indicators, $T_{rm{bol}}$ and $L_{rm {bol}}/L_{rm {smm}}$. FIR CO emission from protostars traces the currently shocked gas by jets/outflows, and $L^{rm fir}_{rm CO}$ is proportional to the instantaneous mass loss rate, $dot{M}_{rm{out}}$. The correlation between $L^{rm fir}_{rm CO}$ and $L_{rm{bol}}$ is indicative of instantaneous $dot{M}_{rm{out}}$ tracking instantaneous $dot{M}_{rm{acc}}$. The lack of correlation between $L^{rm fir}_{rm CO}$ and evolutionary indicators $T_{rm{bol}}$ and $L_{rm {bol}}/L_{rm {smm}}$ suggests that $dot{M}_{rm{out}}$ and, therefore, $dot{M}_{rm{acc}}$ do not show any clear evolutionary trend. These results are consistent with mass accretion/ejection in protostars being episodic. Taken together with the previous finding that the time-averaged mass ejection/accretion rate declines during the protostellar phase (e.g., Bontemps et al. 1996), our results suggest that the instantaneous accretion/ejection rate of protostars is highly time variable and episodic, but the amplitude and/or frequency of this variability decreases with time such that the time averaged accretion/ejection rate declines with system age.
We present high resolution submillimeter interferometric imaging of two of the brightest high-redshift submillimeter galaxies known: GN20 and AzTEC1 at 0.8 and 0.3 arcsec resolution respectively. Our data - the highest resolution submillimeter imaging of high redshift sources accomplished to date - was collected in three different array configurations: compact, extended, and very extended. We derive angular sizes of 0.6 and 1.0 arcsec for GN20 and 0.3 and 0.4 arcsec for AzTEC1 from modeling their visibility functions as a Gaussian and elliptical disk respectively. Because both sources are B-band dropouts, they likely lie within a relatively narrow redshift window around z~4, which indicates their angular extent corresponds to physical scales of 4-8 and 1.5-3 kpc respectively for the starburst region. By way of a series of simple assumptions, we find preliminary evidence that these hyperluminous starbursts - with star formation rates >1000 $M_odot$ yr$^{-1}$ - are radiating at or close to their Eddington limit. Should future high resolution observations indicate that these two objects are typical of a population of high redshift Eddington-limited starbursts, this could have important consequences for models of star formation and feedback in extreme environments.