arXivDaily arXiv每日学术速递 周一至周五更新
arXiv 0902.4695astro-ph.CO
收藏

蓝色致密星系有红色晕吗?

Do blue compact galaxies have red halos?

E. Zackrisson, G. Micheva, N. Bergvall, G. Ostlin

摘要:

红晕是一种微弱的、延伸的、极红的结构,自20世纪90年代中期以来,在各种类型的星系周围都有报道。这些晕圈的颜色太红,与迄今已知的任何类型的恒星星族都不一致,而是表示一个非常底部重的恒星初始质量函数(IMF)。由于这种恒星晕的质光比很大,它们对星系的重子质量有很大的贡献,而对星系的整体光度却贡献甚微。因此,星系的红晕构成了一些重子的潜在储存库,这些重子在低红移宇宙的清单中仍然缺失。虽然大多数对红晕的研究都集中在盘星系上,但在蓝色致密星系(BCGs)的微弱外围也有报告称红色过量。底部重的IMF也可以解释这些结构的颜色,但由于模型的简并性,具有标准IMF和异常高金属丰度的恒星星族也被证明符合数据。在这里,我们表明,由于光谱合成领域的最新发展,在这种替代方案中所需的金属丰度可能不像以前认为的那么极端。这表明在BCGs外围看到的红色过量可能来自一个正常的中等金属丰度的宿主星系,而不是在盘星系周围看到的红色晕。然而,推断出的宿主金属丰度仍然需要宿主比BCGs中心星爆中的气体更富含金属,这与目前对BCGs如何形成的模拟相矛盾。

英文摘要:

Red halos are faint, extended and extremely red structures that have been reported around various types of galaxies since the mid-1990s. The colours of these halos are too red to be reconciled with any hitherto known type of stellar population, and instead indicative of a very bottom-heavy stellar initial mass function (IMF). Due to the large mass-to-light ratios of such stellar halos, they could contribute substantially to the baryonic masses of galaxies while adding very little to their overall luminosities. The red halos of galaxies therefore constitute potential reservoirs for some of the baryons still missing from inventories in the low-redshift Universe. While most studies of red halos have focused on disk galaxies, a red excess has also been reported in the faint outskirts of blue compact galaxies (BCGs). A bottom-heavy IMF can explain the colours of these structures as well, but due to model degeneracies, stellar populations with standard IMFs and abnormally high metallicities have also been demonstrated to fit the data. Here, we show that due to recent developments in the field of spectral synthesis, the metallicities required in this alternative scenario may be less extreme than previously thought. This suggests that the red excess seen in the outskirts of BCGs may stem from a normal, intermediate-metallicity host galaxy rather than a red halo of the type seen around disk galaxies. The inferred host metallicity does, however, still require the host to be more metal-rich than the gas in the central starburst of BCGs, in contradiction with current simulations of how BCGs form.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

↑