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Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2018

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

Quasars

Articles 1 - 6 of 6

Full-Text Articles in Physical Sciences and Mathematics

Nitrogen-To-Oxygen Abundance Ratio Variation In Quiescent Galaxies, Renbin Yan Aug 2018

Nitrogen-To-Oxygen Abundance Ratio Variation In Quiescent Galaxies, Renbin Yan

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

For the first time, we establish a gas-phase abundance pattern calibration for quiescent galaxies using optical emission lines. Quiescent galaxies have warm ionized gas showing line ratios similar to low-ionization nuclear emission line regions. The ionization mechanism for the gas is still an unsettled puzzle. Despite the uncertainty in the ionization mechanism, we argue that we can still infer certain gas-phase abundance pattern from first principles. We show that the relative trend in N/O abundance can still be reliably measured based on [N II] λλ6548,6583/[O II] λλ3726,3729 and a direct measurement of the electron temperature. We construct a composite direct …


Shocks Or Photoionization: Direct Temperature Measurements Of The Low-Ionization Gas In Quiescent Galaxies, Renbin Yan Aug 2018

Shocks Or Photoionization: Direct Temperature Measurements Of The Low-Ionization Gas In Quiescent Galaxies, Renbin Yan

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

The ionization mechanism of the low-ionization gas in quiescent red-sequence galaxies has been a long-standing puzzle. Direct temperature measurements would put strong constraints on this issue. We carefully selected a sample of quiescent red-sequence galaxies from Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We bin them into three bins with different [N II]/H α and [N II]/[O II] ratios, and we measure the temperature-sensitive [O III] λ4363, [N II] λ5755, [S II] λλ4068, 4076, and [O II] λλ7320, 7330 lines in the stacked spectra. The [S II] doublet ratios indicate the line-emitting gas is in the low-density regime (∼10–200 cm−3). We …


Direct Collapse To Supermassive Black Hole Seeds With Radiation Transfer: Cosmological Haloes, Kazem Ardaneh, Yang Luo, Isaac Shlosman, Kentaro Nagamine, John H. Wise, Michael C. Begelman Jun 2018

Direct Collapse To Supermassive Black Hole Seeds With Radiation Transfer: Cosmological Haloes, Kazem Ardaneh, Yang Luo, Isaac Shlosman, Kentaro Nagamine, John H. Wise, Michael C. Begelman

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

We have modelled direct collapse of a primordial gas within dark matter haloes in the presence of radiative transfer, in high-resolution zoom-in simulations in a cosmological framework, down to the formation of the photosphere and the central object. Radiative transfer has been implemented in the flux-limited diffusion (FLD) approximation. Adiabatic models were run for comparison. We find that (a) the FLD flow forms an irregular central structure and does not exhibit fragmentation, contrary to adiabatic flow which forms a thick disc, driving a pair of spiral shocks, subject to Kelvin–Helmholtz shear instability forming fragments; (b) the …


Intermediate-Line Emission In Agns: The Effect Of Prescription Of The Gas Density, T. P. Adhikari, K. Hryniewicz, A. Różańska, B. Czerny, Gary J. Ferland Mar 2018

Intermediate-Line Emission In Agns: The Effect Of Prescription Of The Gas Density, T. P. Adhikari, K. Hryniewicz, A. Różańska, B. Czerny, Gary J. Ferland

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

The requirement of an intermediate-line component in the recently observed spectra of several active galactic nuclei (AGNs) points to the possible existence of a physically separate region between the broad-line region (BLR) and narrow-line region (NLR). In this paper we explore the emission from the intermediate-line region (ILR) by using photoionization simulations of the gas clouds distributed radially from the center of the AGN. The gas clouds span distances typical for the BLR, ILR, and NLR, and the appearance of dust at the sublimation radius is fully taken into account in our model. The structure of a single cloud is …


Direct Collapse To Supermassive Black Hole Seeds With Radiative Transfer: Isolated Halos, Yang Luo, Kazem Ardaneh, Isaac Shlosman, Kentaro Nagamine, John H. Wise, Mitchell C. Begelman Feb 2018

Direct Collapse To Supermassive Black Hole Seeds With Radiative Transfer: Isolated Halos, Yang Luo, Kazem Ardaneh, Isaac Shlosman, Kentaro Nagamine, John H. Wise, Mitchell C. Begelman

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

Direct collapse within dark matter haloes is a promising path to form supermassive black hole seeds at high redshifts. The outer part of this collapse remains optically thin. However, the innermost region of the collapse is expected to become optically thick and requires to follow the radiation field in order to understand its evolution. So far, the adiabatic approximation has been used exclusively for this purpose. We apply radiative transfer in the flux-limited diffusion (FLD) approximation to solve the evolution of coupled gas and radiation for isolated haloes. We find that (1) the photosphere forms at 10−6 pc and …


Luminous And Obscured Quasars And Their Host Galaxies, Agnese Del Moro, David M. Alexander, Franz E. Bauer, Emanuele Daddi, Dale D. Kocevski, Flora Stanley, Daniel H. Mcintosh Jan 2018

Luminous And Obscured Quasars And Their Host Galaxies, Agnese Del Moro, David M. Alexander, Franz E. Bauer, Emanuele Daddi, Dale D. Kocevski, Flora Stanley, Daniel H. Mcintosh

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Publications

The most heavily-obscured, luminous quasars might represent a specific phase of the evolution of the actively accreting supermassive black holes and their host galaxies, possibly related to mergers. We investigated a sample of the most luminous quasars at z ≈ 1 − 3 in the GOODS fields, selected in the mid-infrared band through detailed spectral energy distribution (SED) decomposition. The vast majority of these quasars (~80%) are obscured in the X-ray band and ~30% of them to such an extent, that they are undetected in some of the deepest (2 and 4 Ms) Chandra X-ray data. Although no clear relation …