scholarly journals The SUNBIRD survey: characterizing the super star cluster populations of intensely star-forming galaxies

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (S316) ◽  
pp. 70-76
Author(s):  
Zara Randriamanakoto ◽  
Petri Väisänen

AbstractSuper star clusters (SSCs) represent the youngest and most massive form of known gravitationally bound star clusters in the Universe. They are born abundantly in environments that trigger strong and violent star formation. We investigate the properties of these massive SSCs in a sample of 42 nearby starbursts and luminous infrared galaxies. The targets form the sample of the SUperNovae and starBursts in the InfraReD (SUNBIRD) survey that were imaged using near-infrared (NIR) K-band adaptive optics mounted on the Gemini/NIRI and the VLT/NaCo instruments. Results from i) the fitted power-laws to the SSC K-band luminosity functions, ii) the NIR brightest star cluster magnitude − star formation rate (SFR) relation and iii) the star cluster age and mass distributions have shown the importance of studying SSC host galaxies with high SFR levels to determine the role of the galactic environments in the star cluster formation, evolution and disruption mechanisms.

2020 ◽  
Vol 497 (3) ◽  
pp. 3830-3845 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hajime Fukushima ◽  
Hidenobu Yajima ◽  
Kazuyuki Sugimura ◽  
Takashi Hosokawa ◽  
Kazuyuki Omukai ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT We study star cluster formation in various environments with different metallicities and column densities by performing a suite of 3D radiation hydrodynamics simulations. We find that the photoionization feedback from massive stars controls the star formation efficiency (SFE) in a star-forming cloud, and its impact sensitively depends on the gas metallicity Z and initial cloud surface density Σ. At Z = 1 Z⊙, SFE increases as a power law from 0.03 at Σ = 10 M⊙ pc−2 to 0.3 at $\Sigma = 300\,\mathrm{M}_{\odot }\, {\rm pc^{-2}}$. In low-metallicity cases $10^{-2}\!-\!10^{-1}\, \mathrm{Z}_{\odot }$, star clusters form from atomic warm gases because the molecule formation time is not short enough with respect to the cooling or dynamical time. In addition, the whole cloud is disrupted more easily by expanding H ii bubbles that have higher temperature owing to less efficient cooling. With smaller dust attenuation, the ionizing radiation feedback from nearby massive stars is stronger and terminate star formation in dense clumps. These effects result in inefficient star formation in low-metallicity environments: the SFE drops by a factor of ∼3 at Z = 10−2 Z⊙ compared to the results for Z = 1 Z⊙, regardless of Σ. Newborn star clusters are also gravitationally less bound. We further develop a new semi-analytical model that can reproduce the simulation results well, particularly the observed dependencies of the SFEs on the cloud surface densities and metallicities.


2019 ◽  
Vol 624 ◽  
pp. A81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison W. S. Man ◽  
Matthew D. Lehnert ◽  
Joël D. R. Vernet ◽  
Carlos De Breuck ◽  
Theresa Falkendal

The objective of this work is to study how active galactic nuclei (AGN) influence star formation in host galaxies. We present a detailed investigation of the star-formation history and conditions of a z = 2.57 massive radio galaxy based on VLT/X-shooter and ALMA observations. The deep rest-frame ultraviolet spectrum contains photospheric absorption lines and wind features indicating the presence of OB-type stars. The most significantly detected photospheric features are used to characterize the recent star formation: neither instantaneous nor continuous star-formation history is consistent with the relative strength of the Si IIλ1485 and S Vλ1502 absorption. Rather, at least two bursts of star formation took place in the recent past, at 6+1-2 Myr and ≳20 Myr ago, respectively. We deduce a molecular H2 gas mass of (3.9 ± 1.0) × 1010 M⊙ based on ALMA observations of the [C I] 3P2−3P1 emission. The molecular gas mass is only 13% of its stellar mass. Combined with its high star-formation rate of (1020-170+190 M⊙ yr-1, this implies a high star-formation efficiency of (26 ± 8) Gyr−1 and a short depletion time of (38 ± 12) Myr. We attribute the efficient star formation to compressive gas motions in order to explain the modest velocity dispersions (⩽55 km s−1) of the photospheric lines and of the star-forming gas traced by [C I]. Because of the likely very young age of the radio source, our findings suggest that vigorous star formation consumes much of the gas and works in concert with the AGN to remove any residual molecular gas, and eventually quenching star formation in massive galaxies.


2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (A29B) ◽  
pp. 717-718
Author(s):  
Nate Bastian

AbstractWe review some of the basic population properties of stellar clusters, as well as how they relate to star-formation more broadly within their host galaxies. Despite the common assertion, the vast majority of stars do not form within stellar clusters. For typical galaxies (including the solar neighbourhood), the fraction of stars forming in clusters is ~10%. There are indications however that this fraction increases as a function of increasing star-formation rate surface density, in agreement with model predictions (based on a turbulent ISM and relatively straight-forward prescriptions of star-formation).


2002 ◽  
Vol 207 ◽  
pp. 421-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Søren S. Larsen

Populations of young star clusters show significant differences even among “normal” disk galaxies. In this contribution I discuss how properties of young cluster systems are related to those of their host galaxies, based on a recent study of clusters in a sample of 22 nearby spiral galaxies. Luminous young clusters similar to the “super” star clusters observed in starbursts and mergers exist in several of these galaxies, and it is found that the luminosity of the brightest star cluster as well as the specific luminosity of the cluster systems both correlate well with the host galaxy star formation rate. When considering star clusters in different environments the traditional distinction between “open”, “massive” and “globular” clusters breaks down, underscoring the need for a universal physical description of cluster formation.


2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (S304) ◽  
pp. 302-306
Author(s):  
Chien-Ting J. Chen ◽  
Ryan C. Hickox

AbstractWe present the results of recent studies on the co-evolution of galaxies and the supermassive black holes (SMBHs) using Herschel far-infrared and Chandra X-ray observations in the Boötes survey region. For a sample of star-forming (SF) galaxies, we find a strong correlation between galactic star formation rate and the average SMBH accretion rate in SF galaxies. Recent studies have shown that star formation and AGN accretion are only weakly correlated for individual AGN, but this may be due to the short variability timescale of AGN relative to star formation. Averaging over the full AGN population yields a strong linear correlation between accretion and star formation, consistent with a simple picture in which the growth of SMBHs and their host galaxies are closely linked over galaxy evolution time scales.


2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (S235) ◽  
pp. 430-430
Author(s):  
Yoichi Tamura ◽  
Kouichiro Nakanishi ◽  
Kotaro Kohno ◽  
Ryohei Kawabe

AbstractWe present a new diagnosis method for determining physical properties of star-forming gas in high-z galaxies. In this method, we employed three key observational quantities, [CI], CO, and FIR luminosities, including our new detections of CO J = 4–3 emission from the pure-starburst (non-AGN) submm galaxy SMM J14011+0252 (z = 2.6) and the type-2 AGN IRAS FSC 10214+4724 (z = 2.3) obtained with the Nobeyama Millimeter Array (NMA) at the Nobeyama Radio Observatory. These two sources have extremely high star formation rate, and exhibit strong emission of CO and [CI] 609 μm lines. We determined ISM physical conditions for the two objects and another three high-z quasars in order to investigate the relationship between their ISM and power sources (i.e., massive star formation or AGN). A new PDR analysis (Wolfire et al. 2005, private communication) using CO, [CI], and FIR on five high-z sources provides new evidence that AGN host galaxies harbor denser (log nH ~ 5–6) ISM exposed to stronger far-UV fluxes of log G0 ~ 3.5–4 than the non-AGN submm galaxy. Volume filling factors of the star-forming dense gas in the AGN hosts are an order of magnitude smaller than that of the pure-starburst submm galaxy. This suggests that, in these AGN hosts, dense molecular clouds are dominating the central kpc around AGN, triggering extensive circumnuclear starbursts, and possibly feeding their central supermassive black hole simultaneously.


2021 ◽  
Vol 923 (2) ◽  
pp. 215
Author(s):  
Caitlin M. Casey ◽  
Jorge A. Zavala ◽  
Sinclaire M. Manning ◽  
Manuel Aravena ◽  
Matthieu Béthermin ◽  
...  

Abstract We present the characteristics of 2 mm selected sources from the largest Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) blank-field contiguous survey conducted to date, the Mapping Obscuration to Reionization with ALMA (MORA) survey covering 184 arcmin2 at 2 mm. Twelve of 13 detections above 5σ are attributed to emission from galaxies, 11 of which are dominated by cold dust emission. These sources have a median redshift of 〈 z 2 mm 〉 = 3.6 − 0.3 + 0.4 primarily based on optical/near-infrared photometric redshifts with some spectroscopic redshifts, with 77% ± 11% of sources at z > 3 and 38% ± 12% of sources at z > 4. This implies that 2 mm selection is an efficient method for identifying the highest-redshift dusty star-forming galaxies (DSFGs). Lower-redshift DSFGs (z < 3) are far more numerous than those at z > 3 yet are likely to drop out at 2 mm. MORA shows that DSFGs with star formation rates in excess of 300 M ⊙ yr−1 and a relative rarity of ∼10−5 Mpc−3 contribute ∼30% to the integrated star formation rate density at 3 < z < 6. The volume density of 2 mm selected DSFGs is consistent with predictions from some cosmological simulations and is similar to the volume density of their hypothesized descendants: massive, quiescent galaxies at z > 2. Analysis of MORA sources’ spectral energy distributions hint at steeper empirically measured dust emissivity indices than reported in typical literature studies, with 〈 β 〉 = 2.2 − 0.4 + 0.5 . The MORA survey represents an important step in taking census of obscured star formation in the universe’s first few billion years, but larger area 2 mm surveys are needed to more fully characterize this rare population and push to the detection of the universe’s first dusty galaxies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 619 ◽  
pp. A15 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Girard ◽  
M. Dessauges-Zavadsky ◽  
D. Schaerer ◽  
J. Richard ◽  
K. Nakajima ◽  
...  

Observations have shown that massive star-forming clumps are present in the internal structure of high-redshift galaxies. One way to study these clumps in detail with a higher spatial resolution is by exploiting the power of strong gravitational lensing which stretches images on the sky. In this work, we present an analysis of the clumpy galaxy A68-HLS115 at z = 1.5858, located behind the cluster Abell 68, but strongly lensed by a cluster galaxy member. Resolved observations with SINFONI/VLT in the near-infrared (NIR) show Hα, Hβ, [NII], and [OIII] emission lines. Combined with images covering the B band to the far-infrared (FIR) and CO(2–1) observations, this makes this galaxy one of the only sources for which such multi-band observations are available and for which it is possible to study the properties of resolved star-forming clumps and to perform a detailed analysis of the integrated properties, kinematics, and metallicity. We obtain a stability of υrot/σ0 = 2.73 by modeling the kinematics, which means that the galaxy is dominated by rotation, but this ratio also indicates that the disk is marginally stable. We find a high intrinsic velocity dispersion of 80 ± 10 km s−1 that could be explained by the high gas fraction of fgas = 0.75 ± 0.15 observed in this galaxy. This high fgas and the observed sSFR of 3.12 Gyr−1 suggest that the disk turbulence and instabilities are mostly regulated by incoming gas (available gas reservoir for star formation). The direct measure of the Toomre stability criterion of Qcrit = 0.70 could also indicate the presence of a quasi-stable thick disk. Finally, we identify three clumps in the Hα map which have similar velocity dispersions, metallicities, and seem to be embedded in the rotating disk. These three clumps contribute together to ∼40% on the SFRHα of the galaxy and show a star formation rate density about ∼100 times higher than HII regions in the local Universe.


2019 ◽  
Vol 488 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhong-yi Man ◽  
Ying-jie Peng ◽  
Xu Kong ◽  
Ke-xin Guo ◽  
Cheng-peng Zhang ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Environment is one of the key external drivers of the galaxies, while active galactic nucleus (AGN) is one of the key internal drivers. Both of them play fundamental roles in regulating the formation and evolution of galaxies. We explore the interrelationship between environment and AGN in SDSS. At a given stellar mass, the specific star formation rate distribution of the AGN host galaxies remains unchanged with overdensity, with the peak of the distribution around the Green Valley. We show that, at a given stellar mass, the AGN fraction that has been commonly used in previous studies (defined as the number of AGNs relative to all galaxies including passive and star forming ones) does decrease with increasing overdensity for satellites. This is largely due to the fact that the fraction of passive galaxies strongly depends on environment. In order to investigate the intrinsic correlation between AGN and environment, especially under the assumption that AGN feedback is responsible for star formation quenching, the AGN fraction should be defined as the number of AGNs relative to the star-forming galaxies only. With the new definition, we find little dependence of AGN fraction on overdensity, central/satellite, and group halo mass. There is only marginal evidence that AGN may prefer denser regions, which is possibly due to more frequent interaction of galaxies or higher merger rate in groups. Our results support the scenario that internal secular evolution is the predominant mechanism of triggering AGN activity, while external environment related processes only play a minor role.


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