No Arabic abstract
Herschel Space Observatory photometry and extensive multiwavelength followup have revealed that the powerful radio galaxy 3C 220.3 at z=0.685 acts as a gravitational lens for a background submillimeter galaxy (SMG) at z=2.221. At an observed wavelength of 1mm, the SMG is lensed into three distinct images. In the observed near infrared, these images are connected by an arc of 1.8 radius forming an Einstein half-ring centered near the radio galaxy. In visible light, only the arc is apparent. 3C 220.3 is the only known instance of strong galaxy-scale lensing by a powerful radio galaxy not located in a galaxy cluster and therefore it offers the potential to probe the dark matter content of the radio galaxy host. Lens modeling rejects a single lens, but two lenses centered on the radio galaxy host A and a companion B, separated by 1.5, provide a fit consistent with all data and reveal faint candidates for the predicted fourth and fifth images. The model does not require an extended common dark matter halo, consistent with the absence of extended bright X-ray emission on our Chandra image. The projected dark matter fractions within the Einstein radii of A (1.02) and B (0.61) are about 0.4 +/- 0.3 and 0.55 +/- 0.3. The mass to i-band light ratios of A and B, M/L ~ 8 +/- 4 Msun/Lsun, appear comparable to those of radio-quiet lensing galaxies at the same redshift in the CASTLES, LSD, and SL2S samples. The lensed SMG is extremely bright with observed f(250um) = 440mJy owing to a magnification factor mu~10. The SMG spectrum shows luminous, narrow CIV 154.9nm emission, revealing that the SMG houses a hidden quasar in addition to a violent starburst. Multicolor image reconstruction of the SMG indicates a bipolar morphology of the emitted ultraviolet (UV) light suggestive of cones through which UV light escapes a dust-enshrouded nucleus.
We detect bright [CII]158$mu$m line emission from the radio galaxy 3C 326N at z=0.09, which shows weak star formation ($SFR<0.07$M$_{odot}$~yr$^{-1}$) despite having strong H$_2$ line emission and $2times 10^9$M$_{odot}$ of molecular gas. The [CII] line is twice as strong as the 0-0S(1) 17$mu$m H$_2$ line, and both lines are much in excess what is expected from UV heating. We combine infrared Spitzer and Herschel data with gas and dust modeling to infer the gas physical conditions. The [CII] line traces 30 to 50% of the molecular gas mass, which is warm (70<T<100K) and at moderate densities $700<n_{H}<3000$cm$^{-3}$. The [CII] line is broad with a blue-shifted wing, and likely to be shaped by a combination of rotation, outflowing gas, and turbulence. It matches the near-infrared H$_2$ and the Na D optical absorption lines. If the wing is interpreted as an outflow, the mass loss rate would be larger than 20M$_{odot}$/yr, and the depletion timescale shorter than the orbital timescale ($10^8$yr). These outflow rates may be over-estimated because the stochastic injection of turbulence on galactic scales can contribute to the skewness of the line profile and mimic outflowing gas. We argue that the dissipation of turbulence is the main heating process of this gas. Cosmic rays can also contribute to the heating but they require an average gas density larger than the observational constraints. We show that strong turbulent support maintains a high gas vertical scale height (0.3-4kpc) in the disk and can inhibit the formation of gravitationally-bound structures at all scales, offering a natural explanation for the weakness of star formation in 3C 326N. To conclude, the bright [CII] line indicates that strong AGN jet-driven turbulence may play a key role in enhancing the amount of molecular gas (positive feedback) but yet can prevent star formation on galactic scales (negative feedback).
We present the results of extensive multi-frequency monitoring of the radio galaxy 3C 120 between 2002 and 2007 at X-ray, optical, and radio wave bands, as well as imaging with the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA). Over the 5 yr of observation, significant dips in the X-ray light curve are followed by ejections of bright superluminal knots in the VLBA images. Consistent with this, the X-ray flux and 37 GHz flux are anti-correlated with X-ray leading the radio variations. This implies that, in this radio galaxy, the radiative state of accretion disk plus corona system, where the X-rays are produced, has a direct effect on the events in the jet, where the radio emission originates. The X-ray power spectral density of 3C 120 shows a break, with steeper slope at shorter timescale and the break timescale is commensurate with the mass of the central black hole based on observations of Seyfert galaxies and black hole X-ray binaries. These findings provide support for the paradigm that black hole X-ray binaries and active galactic nuclei are fundamentally similar systems, with characteristic time and size scales linearly proportional to the mass of the central black hole. The X-ray and optical variations are strongly correlated in 3C 120, which implies that the optical emission in this object arises from the same general region as the X-rays, i.e., in the accretion disk-corona system. We numerically model multi-wavelength light curves of 3C 120 from such a system with the optical-UV emission produced in the disk and the X-rays generated by scattering of thermal photons by hot electrons in the corona. From the comparison of the temporal properties of the model light curves to that of the observed variability, we constrain the physical size of the corona and the distances of the emitting regions from the central BH.
We describe a search for submillimeter emission in the vicinity of one of the most distant, luminous galaxies known, HerMES FLS3 at z=6.34, exploiting it as a signpost to a potentially biased region of the early Universe, as might be expected in hierarchical structure formation models. Imaging to the confusion limit with the innovative, wide-field submillimeter bolometer camera, SCUBA-2, we are sensitive to colder and/or less luminous galaxies in the surroundings of HFLS3. We use the Millennium Simulation to illustrate that HFLS3 may be expected to have companions if it is as massive as claimed, but find no significant evidence from the surface density of SCUBA-2 galaxies in its vicinity, or their colors, that HFLS3 marks an over-density of dusty, star-forming galaxies. We cannot rule out the presence of dusty neighbours with confidence, but deeper 450-um imaging has the potential to more tightly constrain the redshifts of nearby galaxies, at least one of which likely lies at z>~5. If associations with HFLS3 can be ruled out, this could be taken as evidence that HFLS3 is less biased than a simple extrapolation of the Millennium Simulation may imply. This could suggest either that it represents a rare short-lived, but highly luminous, phase in the evolution of an otherwise typical galaxy, or that this system has suffered amplification due to a foreground gravitational lens and so is not as intrinsically luminous as claimed.
We present new observations of the galaxy cluster 3C 129 obtained with the Sardinia Radio Telescope in the frequency range 6000-7200 MHz, with the aim to image the large-angular-scale emission at high-frequency of the radio sources located in this cluster of galaxies. The data were acquired using the recently-commissioned ROACH2-based backend to produce full-Stokes image cubes of an area of 1 deg x 1 deg centered on the radio source 3C 129. We modeled and deconvolved the telescope beam pattern from the data. We also measured the instrumental polarization beam patterns to correct the polarization images for off-axis instrumental polarization. Total intensity images at an angular resolution of 2.9 arcmin were obtained for the tailed radio galaxy 3C 129 and for 13 more sources in the field, including 3C 129.1 at the galaxy cluster center. These data were used, in combination with literature data at lower frequencies, to derive the variation of the synchrotron spectrum of 3C 129 along the tail of the radio source. If the magnetic field is at the equipartition value, we showed that the lifetimes of radiating electrons result in a radiative age for 3C 129 of t_syn = 267 +/- 26 Myrs. Assuming a linear projected length of 488 kpc for the tail, we deduced that 3C 129 is moving supersonically with a Mach number of M=v_gal/c_s=1.47. Linearly polarized emission was clearly detected for both 3C 129 and 3C 129.1. The linear polarization measured for 3C 129 reaches levels as high as 70% in the faintest region of the source where the magnetic field is aligned with the direction of the tail.
We report on the discovery in the LOFAR Multifrequency Snapshot Sky Survey (MSSS) of a giant radio galaxy (GRG) with a projected size of $2.56 pm 0.07$ Mpc projected on the sky. It is associated with the galaxy triplet UGC 9555, within which one is identified as a broad-line galaxy in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) at a redshift of $0.05453 pm 1 times 10^{-5} $, and with a velocity dispersion of $215.86 pm 6.34$ km/s. From archival radio observations we see that this galaxy hosts a compact flat-spectrum radio source, and we conclude that it is the active galactic nucleus (AGN) responsible for generating the radio lobes. The radio luminosity distribution of the jets, and the broad-line classification of the host AGN, indicate this GRG is orientated well out of the plane of the sky, making its physical size one of the largest known for any GRG. Analysis of the infrared data suggests that the host is a lenticular type galaxy with a large stellar mass ($log~mathrm{M}/mathrm{M}_odot = 11.56 pm 0.12$), and a moderate star formation rate ($1.2 pm 0.3~mathrm{M}_odot/mathrm{year}$). Spatially smoothing the SDSS images shows the system around UGC 9555 to be significantly disturbed, with a prominent extension to the south-east. Overall, the evidence suggests this host galaxy has undergone one or more recent moderate merger events and is also experiencing tidal interactions with surrounding galaxies, which have caused the star formation and provided the supply of gas to trigger and fuel the Mpc-scale radio lobes.