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arXiv 0802.4105astro-ph
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深射电观测揭示的宇宙恒星形成历史

The Star Formation History of the Universe as Revealed by Deep Radio Observations

N. Seymour, T. Dwelly, D. Moss, I. McHardy, A. Zoghbi, G. Rieke, M. Page, A. Hopkins, N. Loaring

摘要:

由于这些源在大多数波长下的光度都很低,因此在历史上很难辨别出亚mJy射电群的确切性质。利用深地光学跟踪和斯皮策太空望远镜的观测,我们能够在13 ^H XMM-牛顿/钱德拉深场的深多频VLA/MERLIN巡天中首次解开无线电选择的活动星系核(AGN)和恒星形成星系(SFG)种群。鉴别诊断包括射电形态学、射电频谱指数、射电/近红外和中红外/射电通量密度比。我们现在能够分别计算AGN和SFG的河外欧几里德归一化源计数。我们发现,虽然SFG占主导地位,在最微弱的通量密度和占大多数的向上转的计数,活动星系核仍占约四分之一的计数在~5 μ Jy(1.4 GHz)。使用无线电光度作为一个清晰的恒星形成率(SFR)的措施,我们就能够检查宇宙的共动SFR密度达到z=3,这与其他波长的措施一致。我们发现一个粗略的SFR与恒星质量的相关性,这里提出的样本和一个样本的本地无线电选择SFG从6df-NVSS调查。这项工作也证实了恒星形成分布按星系质量的演变:“缩小”的存在,并提供了替代证据。由于这两个样本都是SFR选择的,这个结果表明,对于一个给定的星系,存在一个最大的SFR,它线性地依赖于它的恒星质量。在我们的样本中,SFG的低“特征时间”(反特定SFR)与6dF-NVSS样本相似,这意味着这些源中的大多数都处于增强恒星形成的当前阶段。

英文摘要:

Discerning the exact nature of the sub-mJy radio population has been historically difficult due to the low luminosity of these sources at most wavelengths. Using deep ground based optical follow-up and observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope we are able to disentangle the radio-selected Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) and Star Forming Galaxy (SFG) populations for the first time in a deep multi-frequency VLA/MERLIN Survey of the 13^H XMM-Newton/Chandra Deep Field. The discrimination diagnostics include radio morphology, radio spectral index, radio/near-IR and mid-IR/radio flux density ratios. We are now able to calculate the extragalactic Euclidean normalised source counts separately for AGN and SFGs. We find that while SFGs dominate at the faintest flux densities and account for the majority of the up-turn in the counts, AGN still make up around one quarter of the counts at ~5 uJy (1.4 GHz). Using radio luminosity as an unobscured star formation rate (SFR) measure we are then able to examine the comoving SFR density of the Universe up to z=3 which agrees well with measures at other wavelengths. We find a rough correlation of SFR with stellar mass for both the sample presented here and a sample of local radio-selected SFGs from the 6df-NVSS survey. This work also confirms the existence of, and provides alternative evidence for, the evolution of distribution of star formation by galaxy mass: ``downsizing''. As both these samples are SFR-selected, this result suggests that there is a maximum SFR for a given galaxy that depends linearly on its stellar mass. The low ``characteristic times'' (inverse specific SFR) of the SFGs in our sample are similar to those of the 6dF-NVSS sample, implying that most of these sources are in a current phase of enhanced star formation.

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