No Arabic abstract
In the hierarchical model of structure formation, giant elliptical galaxies form through merging processes within the highest density peaks known as protoclusters. While high-redshift radio galaxies usually pinpoint the location of these environments, we have recently discovered at z~2-3 three Enormous (>200 kpc) Lyman-Alpha Nebulae (ELANe) that host multiple AGN and that are surrounded by overdensities of Lyman-alpha Emitters (LAE). These regions are prime candidates of massive protoclusters in the early stages of assembly. To characterize the star-forming activity within these rare structures - both on ELAN and protocluster scales - we have initiated an observational campaign with the JCMT and the APEX telescopes. In this paper we report on sensitive SCUBA-2/JCMT 850 and 450 $mu$m observations of a 128 arcmin$^2$ field comprising the ELAN MAMMOTH-1, together with the peak of the hosting BOSS1441 LAE overdensity at z=2.32. These observations unveil $4.0pm1.3$ times higher source counts at 850 $mu$m with respect to blank fields, likely confirming the presence of an overdensity also in obscured tracers. We find a strong detection at 850 $mu$m associated with the continuum source embedded within the ELAN MAMMOTH-1, which - together with the available data from the literature - allow us to constrain the spectral energy distribution of this source to be of an ULIRG with a far-infrared luminosity of $L_{rm FIR}^{rm SF}=2.4^{+7.4}_{-2.1}times10^{12}$ L$_{odot}$, and hosting an obscured AGN. Such a source is thus able to power the hard photoionization plus outflow scenario depicted in Cai et al. (2017b) to explain the extended Lyman-alpha, HeII$lambda1640$ and CIV$lambda1549$ emission, and their kinematics. In addition, the two brightest detections at 850 $mu$m ($f_{850}>18$ mJy) sit at the density peak of the LAEs overdensity, likely pinpointing the core of the protocluster.
Linear polarization maps of the Carina Nebula were obtained at 250, 350, and 500 $mu$m during the 2012 flight of the BLASTPol balloon-borne telescope. These measurements are combined with Planck 850 $mu$m data in order to produce a submillimeter spectrum of the polarization fraction of the dust emission, averaged over the cloud. This spectrum is flat to within $pm$15% (relative to the 350 $mu$m polarization fraction). In particular, there is no evidence for a pronounced minimum of the spectrum near 350 $mu$m, as suggested by previous ground-based measurements of other molecular clouds. This result of a flat polarization spectrum in Carina is consistent with recently-published BLASTPol measurements of the Vela C molecular cloud, and also agrees with a published model for an externally-illuminated, dense molecular cloud by Bethell and collaborators. The shape of the spectrum in Carina does not show any dependence on the radiative environment of the dust, as quantified by the Planck-derived dust temperature or dust optical depth at 353 GHz.
We present spectroscopic confirmation of the Pisces Overdensity, also known as Structure J, a photometric overdensity of RR Lyrae stars discovered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) at an estimated photometric distance of ~85kpc. We measure radial velocities for 8 RR Lyrae stars within Pisces. We find that 5 of the 8 stars have heliocentric radial velocities within a narrow range of -87 km/s < v < -67 km/s, suggesting that the photometric overdensity is mainly due to a physically associated system, probably a dwarf galaxy or a disrupted galaxy. Two of the remaining 3 stars differ from one another by only 9 km/s, but it would be premature to identify them as a second system.
Bright quasars, observed when the Universe was less than one billion years old (z>5.5), are known to host massive black holes (~10$^{9}$ M$_{odot}$), and are thought to reside in the center of massive dark matter overdensities. In this picture, overdensities of galaxies are expected around high redshift quasars. However, observations based on the detection of Lyman Break Galaxies (LBGs) around these quasars do not offer a clear picture: this may be due to the uncertain redshift constraints of LBGs, which are selected through broad-band filters only. To circumvent such uncertainties, we here perform a search for Lyman Alpha Emitting galaxies (LAEs) in the field of the quasar PSO J215.1512-16.0417 at z~5.73, through narrow band, deep imaging with FORS2 at the VLT. We study an area of 37 arcmin$^{2}$, i.e. ~206 comoving Mpc$^{2}$ at the redshift of the quasar. We find no evidence for an overdensity of LAEs in the quasar field with respect to blank field studies. Possible explanations for these findings include that our survey volume is too small, or that the strong ionizing radiation from the quasar hinders galaxy formation in its immediate proximity. Another possibility is that these quasars are not situated in the dense environments predicted by some simulations.
We conduct a 350 micron dust continuum emission survey of 17 dust-obscured galaxies (DOGs) at z = 0.05-0.08 with the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory (CSO). We detect 14 DOGs with S_350 = 114-650 mJy and S/N > 3. By including two additional DOGs with submillimeter data in the literature, we are able to study dust contents for a sample of 16 local DOGs that consists of 12 bump and 4 power-law types. We determine their physical parameters with a two-component modified blackbody function model. The derived dust temperatures are in the range 57-122 K and 22-35 K for the warm and cold dust components, respectively. The total dust mass and the mass fraction of warm dust component are 3-34$times10^{7} M_odot$ and 0.03-2.52%, respectively. We compare these results with those of other submillimeter-detected infrared luminous galaxies. The bump DOGs, the majority of the DOG sample, show similar distributions of dust temperatures and total dust mass to the comparison sample. The power-law DOGs show a hint of smaller dust masses than other samples, but need to be tested with a larger sample. These findings support that the reason why DOGs show heavy dust obscuration is not an overall amount of dust content, but probably the spatial distribution of dust therein.
We investigate the galaxy overdensity around proto-cluster scale quasar pairs at high (z>3) and low (z~1) redshift based on the unprecedentedly wide and deep optical survey of the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP). Using the first-year survey data covering effectively ~121 deg^2 with the 5sigma depth of i~26.4 and the SDSS DR12Q catalog, we find two luminous pairs at z~3.3 and 3.6 which reside in >5sigma overdense regions of g-dropout galaxies at i<25. The projected separations of the two pairs are R_perp=1.75 and 1.04 proper Mpc, and their velocity offsets are Delta V=692 and 1448 km s^{-1}, respectively. This result is in clear contrast to the average z~4 quasar environments as discussed in Uchiyama et al. (2017) and implies that the quasar activities of the pair members are triggered via major mergers in proto-clusters, unlike the vast majority of isolated quasars in general fields that may turn on via non-merger events such as bar and disk instabilities. At z~1, we find 37 pairs with R_perp<2 pMpc and Delta V<2300 km s^{-1} in the current HSC-Wide coverage, including four from Hennawi et al. (2006). The distribution of the peak overdensity significance within two arcminutes around the pairs has a long tail toward high density (>4sigma) regions. Thanks to the large sample size, we find a statistical evidence that this excess is unique to the pair environments when compared to single quasar and randomly selected galaxy environments at the same redshift range. Moreover, there are nine small-scale (R_perp<1 pMpc) pairs, two of which are found to reside in cluster fields. Our results demonstrate that <2 pMpc-scale quasar pairs at both redshift range tend to occur in massive haloes, although perhaps not the most massive ones, and that they are useful to search for rare density peaks.