118359510
THE VARIABILITY OF OPTICAL Fe II EMISSION IN PG QSO 1700+518
It is found that Fe II emission contributes significantly to the optical and ultraviolet spectra of most active galactic nuclei. The origin of the optical/UV Fe II emission is still open to debate. The variability of Fe II would give clues to this origin. Using 7.5 yr spectroscopic monitoring data of one Palomar-Green (PG) quasi-stellar object (QSO), PG 1700+518, with strong optical Fe II emission, we obtain the light curves of the continuum f λ(5100 A), Fe II, the broad component of Hβ, and the narrow component of Hβ by spectral decomposition. Through the interpolation cross-correlation method, we calculate the time lags for the light curves of Fe II, the total Hβ, the broad component of Hβ, and the narrow component of Hβ with respect to the continuum light curve. We find that the Fe II time lag in PG 1700+518 is 209+100 –147 days, while the Hβ time lag cannot be determined. Assuming that the Fe II and Hβ emission regions follow the virial relation between the time lag and the FWHM for the Hβ and Fe II emission lines, we can derive the Hβ time lag to be 148+72 –104 days. The Hβ time lag calculated from the empirical luminosity-size relation is 222 days, which is consistent with our measured Fe II time lag. Considering the optical Fe II contribution, PG 1700+518 shares the same spectral slope variability characteristic, i.e., harder spectrum during brighter phase, as the other 15 PG QSOs in our previous work.
15715110
Suppressed star formation in circumnuclear regions in seyfert galaxies
Feedback from black hole activity is widely believed to play a key role in regulating star formation and black hole growth. A long-standing issue is the relation between star formation and the fueling of the supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGNs). We compile a sample of 57 Seyfert galaxies to tackle this issue. We estimate the surface densities of gas and star formation rates in circumnuclear regions (CNRs). Comparing them with the well-known Kennicutt-Schmidt (K-S) law, we find that the star formation rates (SFRs) in the CNRs of most Seyfert galaxies are suppressed in this sample. Feedback is suggested to explain the suppressed SFRs.
17406200
EVOLUTION OF GASEOUS DISK VISCOSITY DRIVEN BY SUPERNOVA EXPLOSIONS IN STAR-FORMING GALAXIES AT HIGH REDSHIFT
Motivated by Genzel et al.'s observations of high-redshift star-forming galaxies, containing clumpy and turbulent rings or disks, we build a set of equations describing the dynamical evolution of gaseous disks with inclusion of star formation and its feedback. Transport of angular momentum is due to "turbulent" viscosity induced by supernova explosions in the star formation region. Analytical solutions of the equations are found for the initial cases of a gaseous ring and the integrated form for a gaseous disk, respectively. For a ring with enough low viscosity, it evolves in a slow process of gaseous diffusion and star formation near the initial radius. For a high viscosity, the ring rapidly diffuses in the early phase. The diffusion drives the ring into a region with a low viscosity and starts the second phase undergoing pile-up of gas at a radius following the decreased viscosity torque. The third is a sharply decreasing phase because of star formation consumption of gas and efficient transportation of gas inward forming a stellar disk. We apply the model to two z similar to 2 galaxies BX 482 and BzK 6004, and find that they are undergoing a decline in their star formation activity.
17396076
INTEGRAL and RXTE/ASM observations on IGR J17098−3628
To probe further the possible nature of the unidentified source IGR J17098-3628, we have carried out a detailed analysis of its long-term time variability as monitored by RXTE/ASM, and of its hard X-ray properties as observed by INTEGRAL. INTEGRAL has monitored this sky region over years and significantly detected IGR J17098-3628 only when the source was in this dubbed active state. In particular, at $\ge$ 20 keV, IBIS/ISGRI caught an outburst in March 2005, lasting for $\sim$5 days with detection significance of 73$\sigma$ (20-40 keV) and with the emission at $ $20 keV) outburst by $\sim$2 days. This resembles the behavior of X-ray novae like XN 1124-683, hence it further suggests a LMXB nature for IGR J17098-3628. While the quality of the ASM data prevents us from drawing any definite conclusions, these discoveries are important clues that, coupled with future observations, will help to resolve the as yet unknown nature of IGR J17098-3628.
119102309
Possible hard X-ray shortages in bursts from KS 1731-260 and 4U 1705-44
Aims. A hard X-ray shortage, implying the cooling of the corona, was observed during bursts of IGR J17473-272, 4U 1636-536, Aql X-1, and GS 1826-238. Apart from these four sources, we investigate here an atoll sample, in which the number of bursts for each source is larger than 5, to explore the possible additional hard X-ray shortage during Rossi X-ray timing explorer (RXTE) era. Methods. According to the source catalog that shows type-I bursts, we analyzed all the available pointing observations of these sources carried out by the RXTE proportional counter array. We grouped and combined the bursts according to their outburst states and searched for the possible hard X-ray shortage while bursting. Results. We found that the island states of KS 1731-260 and 4U 1705-44 show a hard X-ray shortage at significant levels of 4.5 and 4.7σ and a systematic time lag of 0.9 ± 2.1 s and 2.5 ± 2.0 s with respect to the soft X-rays, respectively. While in their banana branches and other sources, we did not find any consistent shortage.
16433217
The afterglows of ultraluminous quasars
Quasars represent a brief phase in the life cycle of most massive galaxies, but the evolutionary connection between central black holes and their host galaxies remains unclear. While quasars are active and shining brighter than the Compton-limit luminosity, their radiation heats the surrounding medium to the Compton temperature, forming Compton spheres extending to the Stromgren radius of Fe26+/He2+. After the quasars shut off, their "afterglow" can be detected through three signatures: (1) an extended X-ray envelope, with a characteristic temperature of ~3 × 107 K, (2) Lyα and Lyβ lines and the K edge of Fe26+, and (3) nebulosity from hydrogen and helium recombination emission lines. We discuss the possibility of detecting these signatures using Chandra, the planned X-Ray Evolving Universe Spectroscopy mission, and ground-based optical telescopes. The luminosity and size of quasar afterglows can be used to constrain the lifetime of quasars.
126140919
Automatic reduction of loop amplitudes
15551027
WHAT CONTROLS THE Fe II STRENGTH IN ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI
We used a large, homogeneous sample of 4178 z <= 0.8 Seyfert 1 galaxies and QSOs selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to investigate the strength of Fe II emission and its correlation with other emission lines and physical parameters of active galactic nuclei. We find that the strongest correlations of almost all the emission-line intensity ratios and equivalent widths (EWs) are with the Eddington ratio (L/L-Edd), rather than with the continuum luminosity at 5100 angstrom (L-5100) or black hole mass (M-BH); the only exception is the EW of ultraviolet Fe II emission, which does not correlate at all with broad-line width, L-5100, M-BH, or L/L-Edd. By contrast, the intensity ratios of both the ultraviolet and optical Fe II emission to MgII lambda 2800 correlate quite strongly with L/L-Edd. Interestingly, among all the emission lines in the near-UV and optical studied in this paper (including MgII lambda 2800, H beta, and [O III]lambda 5007), the EW of narrow optical Fe II emission has the strongest correlation with L/L-Edd. We hypothesize that the variation of the emission-line strength in active galaxies is regulated by L/L-Edd because it governs the global distribution of the hydrogen column density of the clouds gravitationally bound in the line-emitting region, as well as its overall gas supply. The systematic dependence on L/L-Edd must be corrected when using the Fe II/MgII intensity ratio as a measure of the Fe/Mg abundance ratio to study the history of chemical evolution in QSO environments.
118458984
Next-to-leading order QCD predictions for the signal of dark matter and photon associated production at the LHC
We study the potential of the LHC to discover the signal of dark matter associated production with a photon induced by a dimension six effective operator, including next-to-leading order QCD corrections. We investigate the main backgrounds from the standard model, i.e. $Z$ boson and a photon associated production with invisible decay of $Z$ boson, and $Z$ boson and a jet production with the jet misidentified as a photon. We find that the ${p}_{T}^{\ensuremath{\gamma}}$ distributions of the backgrounds decrease faster than that of the signal with increasing of the transverse momentum of the photon. The ${\ensuremath{\eta}}^{\ensuremath{\gamma}}$ distributions of the backgrounds are almost flat in the full range of ${\ensuremath{\eta}}^{\ensuremath{\gamma}}$. In contrast, the signal lies mainly in the central region of ${\ensuremath{\eta}}^{\ensuremath{\gamma}}$. These characteristics may help to select the events in experiments. We show that in the parameter space allowed by the relic abundance constraint, which we have calculated at the next-to-leading-order QCD level, the LHC with $\sqrt{S}=7\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{TeV}$ may discover this signal at the $5\ensuremath{\sigma}$ level after collecting an integrated luminosity of $1\text{ }\text{ }{\mathrm{fb}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$. On the other hand, if this signal is not observed at the LHC, we can set a lower limit on the new physics scale at the $3\ensuremath{\sigma}$ level.
9792067
A Comprehensive Study of 2000 Narrow Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. I. The Sample
This is the first paper in a series dedicated to the study of the emission-line and continuum properties of narrow line Seyfert 1 galaxies (NLS1s). We carried out a systematic search for NLS1s from objects assigned as "QSOs'' or "galaxies'' in the spectroscopic sample of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 3 (SDSS DR3) by a careful modeling of their emission lines and continua. The result is a uniform sample comprising similar to 2000 NLS1s. This sample dramatically increases the number of known NLS1s by a factor of similar to 10 over previous compilations. This paper presents the parameters of the prominent emission lines and continua, which were measured accurately with typical uncertainties < 10%. Taking advantage of such an unprecedented large and uniform sample with accurately measured spectral parameters, we carried out various statistical analyses, some of which were only possible for the first time. The main results found are as follows. (1) Within the overall Seyfert 1 population, the incidence of NLS1s is strongly dependent on the optical, X-ray, and radio luminosities as well as the radio loudness. The fraction of NLS1s peaks around SDSS g-band absolute magnitude M-g similar to -22 mag in the optical and similar to 10(43.2) ergs s(-1) in the soft X-ray band, and decreases quickly as the radio loudness increases. (2) On average the relative Fe II emission, R-4570 = Fe II lambda lambda 4434-4684/H beta, in NLS1s is about twice that in normal active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and is anticorrelated with the broad component width of the Balmer emission lines. (3) The well-known anticorrelation between the width of broad low-ionization lines and the soft X-ray spectral slope for broad line AGNs extends down to FWHM similar to 1000 km s(-1) in NLS1s, but the trend appears to reverse at still smaller line widths. (4) The equivalent width of H beta and Fe II emission lines are strongly correlated with the H beta and continuum luminosities. (5) We do not find any difference between NLS1s and normal AGNs in regard to the narrow line region. (6) We have examined the black hole mass versus stellar velocity dispersion (M-BH-sigma(*)) relation for a subsample of 308 NLS1s for which sigma(*) could be measured directly from fitting the starlight in the SDSS spectra with our stellar spectral templates. A significant correlation between M-BH and sigma(*) is found, but with the bulk of black hole masses falling below the values expected from the M-BH-sigma(*) relation for normal galaxies and normal AGNs. This result indicates that NLS1s are underage AGNs, where the growth of the SMBH lags behind the formation of the galactic bulge. (7) We also find that the FWHM of [N II] line is well correlated with sigma(*) in 206 NLS1s, for which both parameters could be derived with reasonable accuracy. The [N II] width can predict the stellar velocity dispersion to an accuracy of similar to 30%. A similar M-BH-sigma(*) relation could be found for a larger sample of 613 NLS1s on making use of the more reliable measurements of FWHM[N II].
119278481
The X-ray nature of the nucleus in Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 7590
We present the results of the Chandra high-resolution observation of the Seyfert 2 galaxy NGC 7590. This object was reported to show no X-ray absorption in the low-spatial resolution ASCA data. The XMM-Newton observations show that the X-ray emission of NGC 7590 is dominated by an off-nuclear ultra-luminous X-ray source (ULX) and extended emissions from the host galaxy, and the nucleus is rather weak, likely hosting a Compton-thick AGN. Our recent Chandra observation of NGC 7590 enables us to effectively remove the X-ray contamination from the ULX and the extended component. The nuclear source remains undetected at the flux level of ~ 4 × 10 −15 erg cm −2 s −1 . Although not detected, the Chandra data give a 2–10 keV flux upper limit of ~ 6.1 × 10 −15 erg cm −2 s −1 (at a 3σ level), a factor of three less than the XMM-Newton value, strongly supporting the Compton-thick nature of the nucleus. In addition, we detected five off-nuclear X-ray point sources within the galaxy’s D 25 ellipse, all with 2 – 10 keV luminosity above 2 × 10 38 erg s −1 (assuming the distance of NGC 7590). In particular, the ULX previously identified by ROSAT data is resolved by Chandr a into two distinct X-ray sources. Our analysis highlights the importance of high spatial resolution images in discovering and studying ULXs.