No Arabic abstract
Observations of interstellar dust are often used as a proxy for total gas column density $N_mathrm{H}$. By comparing $textit{Planck}$ thermal dust data (Release 1.2) and new dust reddening maps from Pan-STARRS 1 and 2MASS (Green et al. 2018), with accurate (opacity-corrected) HI column densities and newly-published OH data from the Arecibo Millennium survey and 21-SPONGE, we confirm linear correlations between dust optical depth $tau_{353}$, reddening $E(B{-}V)$ and the total proton column density $N_mathrm{H}$ in the range (1$-$30)$times$10$^{20}$cm$^{-2}$, along sightlines with no molecular gas detections in emission. We derive an $N_mathrm{H}$/$E(B{-}V)$ ratio of (9.4$pm$1.6)$times$10$^{21}$cm$^{-2}$mag$^{-1}$ for purely atomic sightlines at $|b|$$>$5$^{circ}$, which is 60$%$ higher than the canonical value of Bohlin et al. (1978). We report a $sim$40$%$ increase in opacity $sigma_{353}$=$tau_{353}$/$N_mathrm{H}$, when moving from the low column density ($N_mathrm{H}$$<$5$times$10$^{20}$cm$^{-2}$) to moderate column density ($N_mathrm{H}$$>$5$times$10$^{20}$cm$^{-2}$) regime, and suggest that this rise is due to the evolution of dust grains in the atomic ISM. Failure to account for HI opacity can cause an additional apparent rise in $sigma_{353}$, of the order of a further $sim$20$%$. We estimate molecular hydrogen column densities $N_{mathrm{H}_{2}}$ from our derived linear relations, and hence derive the OH/H$_2$ abundance ratio of $X_mathrm{OH}$$sim$1$times$10$^{-7}$ for all molecular sightlines. Our results show no evidence of systematic trends in OH abundance with $N_{mathrm{H}_{2}}$ in the range $N_{mathrm{H}_{2}}$$sim$(0.1$-$10)$times$10$^{21}$cm$^{-2}$. This suggests that OH may be used as a reliable proxy for H$_2$ in this range, which includes sightlines with both CO-dark and CO-bright gas.
To study the dust evolution in the cosmological structure formation history, we perform a smoothed particle hydrodynamic simulation with a dust enrichment model in a cosmological volume. We adopt the dust evolution model that represents the grain size distribution by two sizes and takes into account stellar dust production and interstellar dust processing. We examine the dust mass function and the scaling properties of dust in terms of the characteristics of galaxies. The simulation broadly reproduces the observed dust mass functions at redshift $z = 0$, except that it overproduces the massive end at dust mass $M_mathrm{d} gtrsim 10^{8}$ ${rm M}_odot$. This overabundance is due to overproducing massive gas/metal-rich systems, but we also note that the relation between stellar mass and gas-phase metallicity is reproduced fairly well by our recipe. The relation between dust-to-gas ratio and metallicity shows a good agreement with the observed one at $z=0$, which indicates successful implementation of dust evolution in our cosmological simulation. Star formation consumes not only gas but also dust, causing a decreasing trend of the dust-to-stellar mass ratio at the high-mass end of galaxies. We also examine the redshift evolution up to $z sim~ 5$, and find that the galaxies have on average the highest dust mass at $z = 1-2$. For the grain size distribution, we find that galaxies with metallicity $sim 0.3~ Z_odot$ tend to have the highest small-to-large grain abundance ratio; consequently, the extinction curves in those galaxies have the steepest ultraviolet slopes.
We present a study of the dust, stars and atomic gas (HI) in an HI-selected sample of local galaxies (z<0.035) in the Herschel Astrophysical Terahertz Large Area Survey (H-ATLAS) fields. This HI-selected sample reveals a population of very high gas fraction (>80 per cent), low stellar mass sources that appear to be in the earliest stages of their evolution. We compare this sample with dust and stellar mass selected samples to study the dust and gas scaling relations over a wide range of gas fraction (proxy for evolutionary state of a galaxy). The most robust scaling relations for gas and dust are those linked to NUV-r (SSFR) and gas fraction, these do not depend on sample selection or environment. At the highest gas fractions, our additional sample shows the dust content is well below expectations from extrapolating scaling relations for more evolved sources, and dust is not a good tracer of the gas content. The specific dust mass for local galaxies peaks at a gas fraction of ~75 per cent. The atomic gas depletion time is also longer for high gas fraction galaxies, opposite to the trend found for molecular gas depletion timescale. We link this trend to the changing efficiency of conversion of HI to H2 as galaxies increase in stellar mass surface density as they evolve. Finally, we show that galaxies start out barely obscured and increase in obscuration as they evolve, yet there is no clear and simple link between obscuration and global galaxy properties.
In their evolution, star-forming galaxies are known to follow scaling relations between some fundamental physical quantities, such as the mass-metallicity and the main sequence relations. We aim at studying the evolution of galaxies that, at a given redshift, lie simultaneously on the mass-metallicity and main sequence relations (MZR, MSR). To this aim, we use the analytical, leaky-box chemical evolution model of Spitoni et al. (2017), in which galaxy evolution is described by an infall timescale $tau$ and a wind efficiency $lambda$. We provide a detailed analysis of the temporal evolution of galactic metallicity, stellar mass, mass-weighted age and gas fraction. The evolution of the galaxies lying on the MZR and MSR at $zsim0.1$ suggests that the average infall time-scale in two different bins of stellar masses ($M_{star}<10^{10} M_{odot}$ and $M_{star}>10^{10} M_{odot}$) decreases with decreasing redshift. This means that at each redshift, only the youngest galaxies can be assembled on the shortest timescales and still belong to the star-forming MSR. In the lowest mass bin, a decrease of the median $tau$ is accompanied by an increase of the median $lambda$ value. This implies that systems which have formed at more recent times will need to eject a larger amount of mass to keep their metallicity at low values. Another important result is that galactic downsizing, as traced by the age-mass relation, is naturally recovered by imposing that local galaxies lie on both the MZR and MSR. Finally, we study the evolution of the hosts of C$_{rm IV}$ -selected AGN, which at $zsim 2$ follow a flat MZR, as found by Mignoli et al. (2019). If we impose that these systems lie on the MSR, at lower redshifts we find an inverted MZR, meaning that some additional processes must be at play in their evolution.
Using synthetic absorption lines generated from 3D hydro-dynamical simulations we explore how the velocity of a starburst-driven galactic wind correlates with the star formation rate (SFR) and SFR density. We find strong correlations until the scaling relations flatten abruptly at a point set by the mass loading of the starburst. Below this point the scaling relation depends on the temperature regime being probed by the absorption line, not on the mass loading. The exact scaling relation depends on whether the maximum or mean velocity of the absorption line is used. We find that the outflow velocity of neutral gas is four to five times lower than the average velocity of the hottest gas, with the difference in velocity between the neutral and ionized gas increasing with gas ionization. Thus, absorption lines of neutral or low ionized gas will underestimate the outflow velocity of hot gas, severely underestimating outflow energetics.
The spatial variations of the gas-to-dust ratio (GDR) provide constraints on the chemical evolution and lifecycle of dust in galaxies. We examine the relation between dust and gas at 10-50 pc resolution in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds (LMC and SMC) based on Herschel far-infrared (FIR), H I 21 cm, CO, and Halpha observations. In the diffuse atomic ISM, we derive the gas-to-dust ratio as the slope of the dust-gas relation and find gas-to-dust ratios of 380+250-130 in the LMC, and 1200+1600-420 in the SMC, not including helium. The atomic-to-molecular transition is located at dust surface densities of 0.05 Mo pc-2 in the LMC and 0.03 Mo pc-2 in the SMC, corresponding to AV ~ 0.4 and 0.2, respectively. We investigate the range of CO-to-H2 conversion factor to best account for all the molecular gas in the beam of the observations, and find upper limits on XCO to be 6x1020 cm-2 K-1 km-1 s in the LMC (Z=0.5Zo) at 15 pc resolution, and 4x 1021 cm-2 K-1 km-1 s in the SMC (Z=0.2Zo) at 45 pc resolution. In the LMC, the slope of the dust-gas relation in the dense ISM is lower than in the diffuse ISM by a factor ~2, even after accounting for the effects of CO-dark H2 in the translucent envelopes of molecular clouds. Coagulation of dust grains and the subsequent dust emissivity increase in molecular clouds, and/or accretion of gas-phase metals onto dust grains, and the subsequent dust abundance (dust-to-gas ratio) increase in molecular clouds could explain the observations. In the SMC, variations in the dust-gas slope caused by coagulation or accretion are degenerate with the effects of CO-dark H2. Within the expected 5--20 times Galactic XCO range, the dust-gas slope can be either constant or decrease by a factor of several across ISM phases. Further modeling and observations are required to break the degeneracy between dust grain coagulation, accretion, and CO-dark H2.