The evolution of the galaxy stellar mass function is especially useful to test the current model of galaxy formation. Observational data have revealed a few inconsistencies with predictions from the $Λ{\rm CDM}$ model. For example, most massive galaxies have already been observed at very high redshifts, and they have experienced only mild evolution since then. In conflict with this, semi-analytical models of galaxy formation predict an insufficient number of massive galaxies at high redshift and a rapid evolution between redshift 1 and 0 . In addition, there is a strong correlation between star formation rate and stellar mass for star-forming galaxies, which can be roughly reproduced with the model, but with a normalization that is too low at high redshift. Furthermore, the stellar mass density obtained from the integral of the cosmic star formation history is higher than the measured one by a factor of 2. In this paper, we study these issues using a semi-analytical model that includes: 1) cold gas accretion in massive halos at high redshift; 2) tidal stripping of stellar mass from satellite galaxies; and 3) an evolving stellar initial mass function (bottom-light) with a higher gas recycle fraction. Our results show that the combined effects from 1) and 2) can predict sufficiently massive galaxies at high redshifts and reproduce their mild evolution at low redshift, While the combined effects of 1) and 3) can reproduce the correlation between star formation rate and stellar mass for star-forming galaxies across wide range of redshifts. A bottom-light/top-heavy stellar IMF could partly resolve the conflict between the stellar mass density and cosmic star formation history.
We present Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI) observations of giant Lya halos surrounding 9 galaxy groups and clusters at 2<z<3.3, including five new detections and one upper limit. We find observational evidence for the cold-stream to hot-accretion transition predicted by theory by measuring a decrease in the ratio between the spatially extended Lya luminosity and the expected baryonic accretion rate (BAR), with increasing elongation above the transition mass Mstream). This implies a modulation of the share of BAR that remains cold diminishing quasi-linearly (logarithmic slope of 0.97+-0.19, 5 sig…
We study the evolving environment dependence of mass accretion by dark haloes in simulations of cold and warm dark matter (CDM and WDM) cosmologies. The latter allows us to probe the nature of halo growth at scales below the WDM half-mode mass, which form an extreme regime of nonlinear collisionless dynamics and offer an excellent test-bed for ideas relating to hierarchical growth. As environmental proxies, we use the local halo-centric matter density $δ$ and tidal anisotropy $α$, as well as large-scale halo bias $b_1$. Our analysis, while reproducing known trends for environment-dependent acc…
We use cosmological SPH simulations to study the kinematic signatures of cool gas accretion onto a pair of well-resolved galaxy halos. Cold-flow streams and gas-rich mergers produce a circum-galactic component of cool gas that generally orbits with high angular momentum about the galaxy halo before falling in to build the disk. This signature of cosmological accretion should be observable using background-object absorption line studies as features that are offset from the galaxy's systemic velocity by ~100 km/s. Accreted gas typically co-rotates with the central disk in the form of a warped, e…
We analyse measurements of the evolving stellar mass (M0) at which the bending of the star-forming main sequence (MS) occurs over 0<z<4. We find M0~10^10Msun over 0<z<1, then M0 rises up to ~10^11Msun at z=2, and then stays flat or slowly increases towards higher redshifts. When converting M0 values into hosting dark matter halo masses, we show that this behaviour is remarkably consistent with the evolving cold- to hot-accretion transition mass, as predicted by theory and defined by the redshift-independent Mshock at z<1.4 and by the rising Mstream at z>1.4 (for which we propose a revision in …
A generic expectation for gas accreted by high mass haloes is that it is shock heated to the virial temperature of the halo. In low mass haloes, or at high redshift, however, the gas cooling rate is sufficiently rapid that an accretion shock is unlikely to form. Instead, gas can accrete directly into the centre of the halo in a `cold mode' of accretion. Although semi-analytic models have always made a clear distinction between hydrostatic and rapid cooling they have not made a distinction between whether or not an accretion shock forms. Starting from the well-established Galform code, we inves…
It is well established that MgII absorption lines detected in background quasar spectra arise from gas structures associated with foreground galaxies. The degree to which galaxy evolution is driven by the gas cycling through halos is highly uncertain because their gas mass density is poorly constrained. Fitting the MgII equivalent width (W) distribution with a Schechter function and applying the N(HI)-W correlation of Menard & Chelouche, we computed Omega(HI)_MgII ~ Omega(HI)_halo =(1.41 +0.75 -0.44)x10^-4 for 0.4<z<1.4. We exclude DLAs from our calculations so that Omega(HI)_halo comprises ac…
Supermassive black hole accretion and feedback play central role in the evolution of galaxies, groups, and clusters. I review how AGN feedback is tightly coupled with the formation of multiphase gas and the newly probed chaotic cold accretion (CCA). In a turbulent and heated atmosphere, cold clouds and kpc-scale filaments condense out of the plasma via thermal instability and rain toward the black hole. In the nucleus, the recurrent chaotic collisions between the cold clouds, filaments, and central torus promote angular momentum cancellation or mixing, boosting the accretion rate up to 100 tim…
Rapid accretion of cold gas plays a crucial role in getting gas into galaxies. It has been suggested that this accretion proceeds along narrow streams that might also directly drive the turbulence in galactic gas, dynamical disturbances, and bulge formation. In cosmological simulations, however, it is impossible to isolate and hence disentangle the effect of accretion from internal instabilities and mergers. Moreover, in most cosmological simulations, the phase structure and turbulence in the ISM arising from stellar feedback are treated in a sub-grid manner, so that feedback cannot generate I…
We used high resolution spectra in the optical and near-infrared wavelength range to study the abundance ratios and metallicities of the HII regions associated with the polar disk in NGC4650A, in order to put constraints on the formation of the polar disk through cold gas accretion along a filament; this might be the most realistic way by which galaxies get their gas. We have compared the measured metallicities for the polar structure in NGC4650A with those of different morphological types and we have found that they are similar to those of late-type galaxies: such results is consistent with a…
{Abridged} We investigate the observability of cold accretion streams at redshift 3 via Lyman-alpha (Lya) emission and the feasibility of cold accretion as the main driver of Lya blobs (LABs). We run cosmological zoom simulations focusing on 3 halos spanning two orders of magnitude in mass, roughly from 10^11 to 10^13 solar masses. We use a version of the Ramses code that includes radiative transfer of UV photons, and we employ a refinement strategy that allows us to resolve accretion streams in their natural environment to an unprecedented level. For the first time, we self-consistently model…
We use cosmological SPH simulations to study the cool, accreted gas in two Milky Way-size galaxies through cosmic time to z=0. We find that gas from mergers and cold flow accretion results in significant amounts of cool gas in galaxy halos. This cool circum-galactic component drops precipitously once the galaxies cross the critical mass to form stable shocks, Mvir = Msh ~ 10^12 Msun. Before reaching Msh, the galaxies experience cold mode accretion (T<10^5 K) and show moderately high covering fractions in accreted gas: f_c ~ 30-50% for R<50 co-moving kpc and N_HI>10^16 cm^-2. These values are c…
We present detailed photo+collisional ionization models and kinematic models of the multi-phase absorbing gas, detected within the HST/COS, HST/STIS, and Keck/HIRES spectra of the background quasar TON 153, at 104 kpc along the projected minor axis of a star-forming spiral galaxy (z=0.6610). Complementary g'r'i'Ks photometry and stellar population models indicate that the host galaxy is dominated by a 4 Gyr stellar population with slightly greater than solar metallicity and has an estimated log(M*)=11 and a log(Mvir)=13. Photoionization models of the low ionization absorption, (MgI, SiII, MgII…
Recent hydrodynamic simulations of galaxy formation reveal streams of cold (T ~ 1e4 K) gas flowing into the centers of dark matter halos as massive as 1e12-1e13.5 M_sun at redshifts z~1-3. In this paper we show that if > 20% of the gravitational binding energy of the gas is radiated away, then the simulated cold flows are spatially extended Lyman Alpha (Lya) sources with luminosities, Lya line widths, and number densities that are comparable to those of observed Lya blobs. Furthermore, the filamentary structure of the cold flows can explain the wide range of observed Lya blob morphologies. Sin…
Theoretical models of galaxy formation predict that galaxies acquire most of their baryons via cold mode accretion. Observations of high-redshift galaxies, while showing ubiquitous outflows, have so far not revealed convincing traces of the predicted cold streams, which has been interpreted as a challenge for the current models. Using high-resolution, zoom-in smooth particle hydrodynamics simulations of Lyman break galaxy (LBG) halos combined with ionizing radiative transfer, we quantify the covering factor of the cold streams at z=2-4. We focus specifically on Lyman limit systems (LLSs) and d…
We discuss the support for the cooling of gas directly at the disk-halo interface as a mechanism to continually fuel a galaxy. This may be an important reservoir as there is not enough cold gas observed in galaxy halos and simulations indicate the existing cold clouds will be rapidly destroyed as they move through the surrounding halo medium. We show possible evidence for a net infall of the WIM layer in the Milky Way, simulation results showing the recooling of warm clouds at the disk-halo interface, and GALFA HI data of small, cold HI clouds that could represent this recooling.
We apply halo abundance matching to obtain galaxy virial masses, M_h, and radii, Rvir, for the 183 isolated galaxies in the "MgII Absorber-Galaxy Catalog" (MAGIICAT, Nielsen et al.). All galaxies have spectroscopic redshifts (0.1 < z < 1.1) and their circumgalactic medium (CGM) is probed in MgII absorption within projected galactocentric distances D < 200 kpc. We examine the behavior of equivalent width, W(2796), and covering fraction, f_c, as a function of D, D/Rvir, and M_h. We find: [1] systematic segregation of M_h on the W(2796)-D plane (4.0 sigma); high-mass halos are found at higher D w…
Heating from active galactic nuclei (AGN) is thought to stabilize cool-core clusters, limiting star formation and cooling flows. We employ radiative magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) simulations to model light AGN jet feedback with different accretion modes (Bondi-Hoyle-Lyttleton and cold accretion) in an idealised Perseus-like cluster. Independent of the probed accretion model, accretion efficiency, jet density and resolution, the cluster self-regulates with central entropies and cooling times consistent with observed cool-core clusters in this non-cosmological setting. We find that increased jet ef…
Lyman-$α$ nebulae are usually found in massive environments at high redshift ($z > 2$). The origin of their Lyman-$α$ (Lya) emission remains debated. Recent polarimetric observations showed that at least some Lya sources are polarized. This is often interpreted as a proof that the photons are centrally produced, and opposed to the scenario in which the Lya emission is the cooling radiation emitted by gas heated during the accretion onto the halo. We suggest that this scenario is not incompatible with the polarimetric observations. In order to test this idea, we post-process a radiative hydrody…
We study the evolution of the gaseous components in massive simulated galaxies and show that their early formation is fuelled by cold, low entropy gas streams. At lower redshifts of z<3 the simulated galaxies are massive enough to support stable virial shocks resulting in a transition from cold to hot gas accretion. The gas accretion history of early-type galaxies is directly linked to the formation of their stellar component in the two phased formation scenario, in which the central parts of the galaxy assemble rapidly through in situ star formation and the later assembly is dominated primari…
Simulations predict that galaxies grow primarily through the accretion of gas that has not gone through an accretion shock near the virial radius and that this cold gas flows towards the central galaxy along dense filaments and streams. There is, however, little observational evidence for the existence of these cold flows. We use a large, cosmological, hydrodynamical simulation that has been post-processed with radiative transfer to study the contribution of cold flows to the observed z=3 column density distribution of neutral hydrogen, which our simulation reproduces. We find that nearly all …
The cosmic star formation rate is observed to drop sharply after redshift z=2. We use a large, cosmological, smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulation to investigate how this decline is related to the evolution of gas accretion and to outflows driven by active galactic nuclei (AGN). We find that the drop in the star formation rate follows a corresponding decline in the global cold-mode accretion rate density onto haloes, but with a delay of order the gas consumption time scale in the interstellar medium. Here we define cold-mode (hot-mode) accretion as gas that is accreted and whose temperatu…
Understanding the evolution of accretion activity is fundamental to our understanding of how galaxies form and evolve over the history of the Universe. We analyse a complete sample of 27 radio galaxies which includes both high-excitation (HEGs) and low excitation galaxies (LEGs), spanning a narrow redshift range of 0.9 < z < 1.1 and covering a factor of ~1000 in radio luminosity. Using data from the Spitzer Space Telescope combined with ground-based optical and near-infrared imaging, we show that the host galaxies have masses in the range of 10.7 < log (M /M_sun) < 12.0 with HEGs and LEGs exhi…
We use a suite of cosmological hydrodynamic simulations to quantify the accretion rates of baryons into dark matter halos and the resulting baryon mass fractions, as a function of halo mass, redshift, and baryon type (including cold and hot gas). We find that the net baryonic accretion rates through the virial radius are sensitive to galactic outflows and explore a range of outflow parameters to illustrate the effects. We show that the cold gas accretion rate is in general not a simple universal factor of the dark matter accretion rate, and that galactic winds can cause star formation rates to…
We use zoom-in techniques to re-simulate three high-redshift (z > 5.5) halos which host 10^9 solar mass blackholes from the ~ Gpc volume, MassiveBlack cosmological hydrodynamic simulation. We examine a number of factors potentially affecting supermassive blackhole growth at high redshift in cosmological simulations. These include numerical resolution, feedback prescriptions and formulation of smoothed particle hydrodynamics. We find that varying the size of the region over which feedback energy is deposited directly, either for fixed number of neighbours or fixed volume makes very little diffe…
We present simulations of galaxy formation, based on the GADGET-3 code, in which a sub-resolution model for star formation and stellar feedback is interfaced with a new model for AGN feedback. Our sub-resolution model describes a multiphase ISM, accounting for hot and cold gas within the same resolution element: we exploit this feature to investigate the impact of coupling AGN feedback energy to the different phases of the ISM over cosmic time. Our fiducial model considers that AGN feedback energy coupling is driven by the covering factors of the hot and cold phases. We perform a suite of cosm…
The influence of the large scale structure on host halos may be studied by examining the angular infall pattern of subhalos. In particular, since warm and cold dark matter cosmologies predict different abundances and internal properties for halos at the low mass end of the mass function, it is interesting to examine if there are differences in how these low mass halos are accreted. The accretion events are defined as the moment a halo becomes a substructure, namely when it crosses its host's virial radius. We quantify the cosmic web at each point by the shear tensor and examine where, with res…
We propose that cold filamentary accretion in massive galaxies at high redshift can lead to the formation of star-forming clumps in the halos of these galaxies without the presence of dark matter sub-structure. In certain cases, these clumps can be the birth places of metal poor globular-clusters (MP GCs). Using cosmological simulations, we show that narrow streams of dense gas feeding massive galaxies from the cosmic web can fragment, producing star-forming clumps. We then derive an analytical model for the properties of streams as a function of halo mass and redshift, and assess when these a…
We present MUSE observations of the field of the quasar Q0152$-$020 whose spectrum shows a Lyman limit system (LLS) at redshift $z_{\rm abs} = 0.38$, with a metallicity Z $\gtrsim 0.06$ Z$_\odot$. The low ionization metal lines associated with the LLS present two narrow distinct absorption components with a velocity separation of 26 km ${\rm s}^{-1}$. We detect six galaxies within 600 km ${\rm s}^{-1}$ from the absorption redshift; their projected distances from the quasar sightline range from 60 to 200 kpc. The optical spectra of five of these galaxies exhibit prominent nebular emission lines…
Using 3D AMR simulations, linking the 50 kpc to the sub-pc scales over the course of 40 Myr, we systematically relax the classic Bondi assumptions in a typical galaxy hosting a SMBH. In the realistic scenario, where the hot gas is cooling, while heated and stirred on large scales, the accretion rate is boosted up to two orders of magnitude compared with the Bondi prediction. The cause is the nonlinear growth of thermal instabilities, leading to the condensation of cold clouds and filaments when t_cool/t_ff < 10. Subsonic turbulence of just over 100 km/s (M > 0.2) induces the formation of therm…
Using the cosmological baryonic accretion rate and normal star formation efficiencies, we present a very simple model for star-forming galaxies (SFGs) that accounts for the mass and redshift dependencies of the SFR-Mass and Tully-Fisher relations from z=2 to the present. The time evolution follows from the fact that each modelled galaxy approaches a steady state where the SFR follows the (net) cold gas accretion rate. The key feature of the model is a halo mass floor M_{min}~10^{11} below which accretion is quenched in order to simultaneously account for the observed slopes of the SFR-Mass and…
Using HST/COS/STIS and HIRES/Keck high-resolution spectra, we have studied a remarkable HI absorbing complex at z=0.672 toward the quasar Q1317+277. The HI absorption has a velocity spread of 1600 km/s, comprises 21 Voigt profile components, and resides at an impact parameter of D=58 kpc from a bright, high mass [log(M_vir/M_sun) ~ 13.7] elliptical galaxy that is deduced to have a 6 Gyr old, solar metallicity stellar population. Ionization models suggest the majority of the structure is cold gas surrounding a shock heated cloud that is kinematically adjacent to a multi-phase group of clouds wi…
The aim of the present study is to test whether the cold accretion of gas through a "cosmic filament" Macciò et al. 2006 is a possible formation scenario for the polar disk galaxy NGC 4650A. If polar disks form from cold accretion of gas, the abundances of the HII regions may be similar to those of very late-type spiral galaxies, regardless of the presence of a bright central stellar spheroid, with total luminosity of few 10^9 Lsun. We use deep long slit spectra obtained with the FORS2 spectrograph at the VLT in the optical and near-infrared wavelength ranges for the brightest HII regions in t…
VGS31b is a highly-inclined ring galaxy found along a filament in a void (Kreckel et al. 2012). Detailed photometry, by using u, g, r, i, z SDSS images, has shown that the overall morphology of VGS31b is very tricky, due to (i) the presence of a highly inclined (72 deg) ring-like structure, which reaches the galaxy center tracing a "spiral-like" pattern, (ii) a one sided tail towards North-East and (iii) a bar in the central regions (Beygu et al. 2013). Such structure is reasonably the result of a "second event" in the evolution history of this galaxy, which could be a gravitational interactio…
We use the Millennium Simulation series to study the relation between the accretion history (MAH) and mass profile of cold dark matter halos. We find that the mean density within the scale radius, r_{-2} (where the halo density profile has isothermal slope), is directly proportional to the critical density of the Universe at the time when the main progenitor's virial mass equals the mass enclosed within r_{-2}. Scaled to these characteristic values of mass and density, the mean MAH, expressed in terms of the critical density of the Universe, M(ρ_{crit}(z)), resembles that of the enclosed densi…
Feedback heating from active galactic nuclei (AGNs) has been commonly invoked to suppress cooling flows predicted in hot gas in elliptical galaxies, galaxy groups and clusters. Previous studies have focused on if and how AGN feedback heats the gas, but little paid attention to its triggering mechanism. Using spherically symmetric simulations, we investigate how large-scale cooling flows are accreted by central supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in eight well-observed systems and find an interesting dichotomy. In massive clusters, the gas develops a central cooling catastrophe within about the co…
Observations of the most distant bright quasars imply that billion solar mass supermassive black holes (SMBH) have to be assembled within the first eight hundred million years. Under our standard galaxy formation scenario such fast growth implies large gas densities providing sustained accretion at critical or supercritical rates onto an initial black hole seed. It has been a long standing question whether and how such high black hole accretion rates can be achieved and sustained at the centers of early galaxies. Here we use our new cosmological hydrodynamic simulation (MassiveBlack) covering …
(Abridged) We present new photometric and spectroscopic observations of the famous Hoag's Object, a peculiar ring galaxy with a central roundish core. The nature of Hoag's Object is still under controversial discussion. Previous studies demonstrated that a major accretion event that took place at least 2-3 Gyr ago can account for the observational evidence. However, the role of internal nonlinear mechanisms in forming the outer ring was not yet completely ruled out. These new data, together with HI and optical information from the literature, are used to demonstrate that Hoag's Object is a rel…
The Lyman-alpha (Lya) emission has played an important role in detecting high-redshift galaxies, including recently distant ones at redshift z > 7. It may also contain important information on the origin of these galaxies. Here, we investigate the formation of a typical L* galaxy and its observational signatures at the earliest stage, by combining a cosmological hydrodynamic simulation with three-dimensional radiative transfer calculations using the newly improved ART^2 code. Our cosmological simulation uses the Aquila initial condition which zooms in onto a Milky Way-like halo with high resol…
The optical-UV continuum of quasars is broadly consistent with the emission from a geometrically thin optically thick accretion disk (AD). The AD produces the ionizing continuum which powers the broad and narrow emission lines. The maximum AD effective temperature is given by Teff=fmax(Mdot/M^2)^1/4, where M is the black hole mass, Mdot the accretion rate, and fmax is set by the black hole spin a_*. For a low enough value of Mdot/M^2 the AD may become too cold to produce ionizing photons. Such an object will form a lineless quasar. This occurs for a local blackbody (BB) AD with a luminosity Lo…
Recent observations have shown that the majority of the Andromeda galaxy's satellites are aligned in a thin plane. On the theoretical side it has been proposed that galaxies acquire their gas via cold streams. In addition, numerical simulations show that the same streams also deliver gas clumps which could potentially develop into satellite galaxies. Assuming that cold streams are a major source of satellite systems around galaxies we calculate the probabilities in two different models to find a certain fraction of satellites within a thin plane around the central galaxy of the host halo with …
It has recently been suggested that galaxies in the early Universe can grow through the accretion of cold gas, and that this may have been the main driver of star formation and stellar mass growth. Because the cold gas is essentially primordial, it has a very low abundance of elements heavier than helium (metallicity). As it is funneled to the centre of a galaxy, it will lead the central gas having an overall lower metallicity than gas further from the centre, because the gas further out has been enriched by supernovae and stellar winds, and not diluted by the primordial gas. Here we report ch…
We investigate the nature of gas accretion onto haloes and galaxies at z=2 using cosmological hydrodynamic simulations run with the moving mesh code AREPO. Implementing a Monte Carlo tracer particle scheme to determine the origin and thermodynamic history of accreting gas, we make quantitative comparisons to an otherwise identical simulation run with the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) code GADGET-3. Contrasting these two numerical approaches, we find significant physical differences in the thermodynamic history of accreted gas in haloes above 10^10.5 solar masses. In agreement with prev…
We present UV and optical observations from the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope and Keck of a z= 0.27395 Lyman limit system (LLS) seen in absorption against the QSO PG1630+377. We detect H I absorption with log N(HI)=17.06\pm0.05 as well as Mg II, C III, Si III, and O VI in this system. The column densities are readily explained if this is a multi-phase system, with the intermediate and low ions arising in a very low metallicity ([Mg/ H] =-1.71 \pm 0.06) photoionized gas. We identify via Keck spectroscopy and Large Binocular Telescope imaging a 0.3 L_* star-forming ga…
We propose a new scenario for supermassive star (SMS;>10^5Msun) formation in shocked regions of colliding cold accretion flows near the centers of first galaxies. Recent numerical simulations indicate that assembly of a typical first galaxy with virial temperature (~10^4K) proceeds via cold and dense flows penetrating deep to the center, where the supersonic streams collide each other to develop a hot and dense (~10^4K, ~10^3/cc) shocked gas. The post-shock layer first cools by efficient Ly alpha emission and contracts isobarically until 8000K. Whether the layer continues the isobaric contract…
We present results from high--resolution cosmological hydrodynamical simulations of a Milky--Way-sized halo, aimed at studying the effect of feedback on the nature of gas accretion. Simulations include a model of inter-stellar medium and star formation, in which SN explosions provide effective thermal feedback. We distinguish between gas accretion onto the halo, which occurs when gas particles cross the halo virial radius, and gas accretion onto the central galaxy, which takes place when gas particles cross the inner one-tenth of the virial radius. Gas particles can be accreted through three d…
We develop a radiation pressure-balanced model for the interstellar medium of high-redshift galaxies that describes many facets of galaxy formation at z>~6, including star formation rates and distributions and gas accretion onto central black holes. We first show that the vertical gravitational force in the disk of such a model is dominated by the disk self-gravity supported by the radiation pressure of ionizing starlight on gas. Constraining our model to reproduce the UV luminosity function of Lyman-break galaxies (LBGs), we limit the available parameter-space to wind mass-loading factors 1--…
We combine HI 21cm observations of the Milky Way, M31, and the local galaxy population with QSO absorption-line measurements to geometrically model the three-dimensional distribution of infalling neutral gas clouds (HVCs) in the extended halos of low-redshift galaxies. We demonstrate that the observed distribution of HVCs around the Milky Way and M31 can be modeled by a radial exponential decline of the mean HI volume filling factor in their halos. Our model suggests a characteristic radial extent of HVCs of R_halo=50 kpc, a total HI mass in HVCs of ~10^8 M_sun, and a neutral-gas-accretion rat…
We probe the HI properties and the gas environments of three early-type barred galaxies harbouring counter-rotating ionized gas, NGC 128, NGC 3203 and NGC 7332. Each system has one or more optically-identified galaxy, at a similar or as yet unknown redshift within a 50 kpc projected radius. Using HI synthesis imaging data, we investigate the hypothesis that the counter-rotating gas in these galaxies has been accreted from their neighbours. In NGC 128 and NGC 3203, we find 9.6e7 and 2.3e8 Msun of HI, respectively, covering almost the entire stellar bodies of dwarf companions that appear physica…
In our current galaxy formation paradigm, high-redshift galaxies are predominantly fuelled by accretion of cool, metal-poor gas from the intergalactic medium. Hydrodynamical simulations predict that this material should be observable in absorption against background sightlines within a galaxy's virial radius, as optically thick Lyman-limit systems (LLSs) with low metallicities. Here we report the discovery of exactly such a strong metal-poor absorber at an impact parameter R_perp = 58 kpc from a star-forming galaxy at z = 2.44. Besides strong neutral hydrogen [N(HI) = 10^(19.50 +/- 0.16) cm^-2…
We argue that current observations of $M - σ$ relations for galaxies can be used to constrain theories of super-massive black holes (SMBH) feeding. In particular, assuming that SMBH mass is limited only by the feedback on the gas that feeds it, we show that SMBHs fed via a planar galaxy scale gas flow, such as a disc or a bar, should be much more massive than their counterparts fed by quasi-spherical inflows. This follows from the relative inefficiency of AGN feedback on a flattened inflow. We find that even under the most optimistic conditions for SMBH feedback on flattened inflows, the mass …
