arXiv subjects

F. Combes

Publications and source records attributed to F. Combes.

At least 379 records · Page 21Linked to original sources

arXiv2007

Velocity dispersion around ellipticals in MOND

We investigate how different models that have been proposed for solving the dark matter problem can fit the velocity dispersion observed around elliptical galaxies, on either a small scale (~ 20kpc) with stellar tracers, such as planetary nebulae, or large scale (~ 200kpc) with satellite galaxies as tracers. Predictions of Newtonian gravity, either containing pure baryonic matter, or embedded in massive cold dark matter (CDM) haloes, are compared with predictions of the modified gravity of MOND. The standard CDM model has problems on a small scale, and the Newtonian pure baryonic model has difficulties on a large scale, while a fit with MOND is possible on both scales.

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arXiv2007

Atomic Hydrogen Properties of AGN Host Galaxies: HI in 16 NUclei of GAlaxies (NUGA) Sources

We present a comprehensive spectroscopic imaging survey of the distribution and kinematics of atomic hydrogen (HI) in 16 nearby spiral galaxies hosting low luminosity AGN, observed with high spectral and spatial resolution (resolution: ~20 arcsec, 5 km/s) using the NRAO Very Large Array (VLA). The sample contains a range of nuclear types, ranging from Seyfert to star-forming nuclei and was originally selected for the NUclei of GAlaxies project (NUGA) - a spectrally and spatially resolved interferometric survey of gas dynamics in nearby galaxies designed to identify the fueling mechanisms of AGN and the relation to host galaxy evolution. Here we investigate the relationship between the HI properties of these galaxies, their environment, their stellar distribution and their AGN type. The large-scale HI morphology of each galaxy is classified as ringed, spiral, or centrally concentrated; comparison of the resulting morphological classification with AGN type reveals that ring structures are significantly more common in LINER than in Seyfert host galaxies, suggesting a time evolution of the AGN activity together with the redistribution of the neutral gas. Dynamically disturbed HI disks are also more prevalent in LINER host galaxies than in Seyfert host galaxies. While several galaxies are surrounded by companions (some with associated HI emission), there is no correlation between the presence of companions and the AGN type (Seyfert/LINER).

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arXiv2007

Old stellar counter-rotating components in early-type galaxies from elliptical-spiral mergers

We investigate, by means of numerical simulations, the possibility of forming counter-rotating old stellar components by major mergers between an elliptical and a spiral galaxy. We show that counter-rotation can appear both in dissipative and dissipationless retrograde mergers, and it is mostly associated to the presence of a disk component, which preserves part of its initial spin. In turn, the external regions of the two interacting galaxies acquire part of the orbital angular momentum, due to the action of tidal forces exerted on each galaxy by the companion.

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arXiv2007

The coupling of dynamics and molecular chemistry in galaxies

While the best tracer of the molecular component and its dynamics in galaxies is the CO molecule, which excitation is revealed by its isotopic and (2-1)/(1-0) ratios, the denser gas is revealed by molecules such as HCN, HNC, HCO+ or CN, which are now widely used to probe star formation regions, or to quantify the impact of the nuclear activity on the interstellar medium. This paper reviews recent observations in nearby galaxies, where these molecular line ratios serve as diagnostic tools of the physical conditions of the gas and also of its chemical properties. Those differ significantly according to the proximity of an AGN or of a starburst. The origin of the differences is not yet well known and could be due to different densities, temperatures, chemical abundances or non-collisional excitation of the gas (e.g. Aalto et al 2007, Krips et al 2007). HCN or HNC line enhancements can be caused not only by higher gas densities/temperatures, but also UV/X-ray radiation, and global IR pumping. The chemistry can be dominated by PDR regions near a starburst, or X-ray dominated in a molecular torus surrounding an AGN (XDR regions). The molecular line ratios expected in those regions vary according to the different models (Meijerink et al. 2007).

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arXiv2007

Bar formation and galaxy interactions in MOND

The LCDM model is the most commonly admitted to describe our Universe. In spite of a great success with regard to the large scale structure formation, some problems are still unresolved at galactic scales. Alternative scenarios have to be explored such as modified gravity. We have developed an N-body code able to solve in a self consistent way the galactic dynamics in MOND. The first version of the code consists in solving the modified Poisson equation on a uniform Cartesian grid to derive the gravitational force on each particle. With it, we study the evolution of isolated galaxies, like the bar instability, the angular momentum transfer, etc. Galaxies in MOND are found to form stronger bars, faster than in Newtonian dynamics with dark matter. In a second step, we implement an adaptive mesh refinement technique in the code, allowing to run more contrasted simulations on larger scales, like interacting galaxies. During an interaction, the dynamical friction forces are less important in MOND, and merging times are longer than in DM models. The different morphologies of interacting galaxies in the two models are discussed. All simulations are performed in both frameworks of modified gravity and Newtonian gravity with dark matter with equivalent initial conditions.

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arXiv2007

Chemodynamical evolution of interacting galaxies: the GalMer view

We have undertaken a large set of simulations of galaxy interactions and mergers (GalMer Project) in order to study the physical processes related to galaxy encounters. All morphological types along the Hubble sequence are considered in the initial conditions of the two colliding galaxies, with varying bulge-to-disk ratios and gas mass fractions. Different types of orbits are simulated, direct and retrograde, according to the initial relative energy and impact parameter. The self gravity of stars, gas and dark matter is taken into account through a tree-code algorithm, the gas hydrodynamics through SPH. Star formation is included adopting a density-dependent Schmidt law. This wide library of galaxy interactions and mergers, containing, at present, about 900 simulations of major encounters, represents an unique tool to investigate statistically the chemodynamical evolution of interacting systems. In the following, we present and discuss some results obtained exploring the dataset, together with some future perspectives.

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arXiv2007

Galaxy Evolution and Star Formation Efficiency in the Last Half of the Universe

We present the results of a CO(1-0) emission survey with the IRAM 30m of 30 galaxies at moderate redshift (z ~ 0.2-0.6) to explore galaxy evolution and in particular the star formation efficiency, in the redshift range filling the gap between local and very high-z objects. Our detection rate is about 50%. One of the bright objects was mapped at high resolution with the IRAM interferometer, and about 50% of the total emission found in the 27 arcsec (97 kpc) single dish beam is recovered by the interferometer, suggesting the presence of extended emission. The FIR-to-CO luminosity ratio is enhanced, following the increasing trend observed between local and high-z ultra-luminous starbursts.

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arXiv2007

Gaseous Flows in Galaxies

The gas component plays a major role in the dynamics of spiral galaxies, because of its dissipative character, and its ability to exchange angular momentum with stars in the disk. Due to its small velocity dispersion, it triggers gravitational instabilities, and the corresponding non-axisymmetric patterns produce gravity torques, which mediate these angular momentum exchanges. When a srong bar pattern develops with the same pattern speed all over the disk, only gas inside corotation can flow towards the center. But strong bars are not long lived in presence of gas, and multiple-speed spiral patterns can develop between bar phases, and help the galaxy to accrete external gas flowing from cosmic filaments. The gas is then intermittently driven to the galaxy center, to form nuclear starbursts and fuel an active nucleus. The various time-scales of these gaseous flows are described.

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arXiv2007

Global lopsided instability in a purely stellar galactic disc

It is shown that pure exponential discs in spiral galaxies are capable of supporting slowly varying discrete global lopsided modes, which can explain the observed features of lopsidedness in the stellar discs. Using linearized fluid dynamical equations with the softened self-gravity and pressure of the perturbation as the collective effect, we derive self-consistently a quadratic eigenvalue equation for the lopsided perturbation in the galactic disc. On solving this, we find that the ground-state mode shows the observed characteristics of the lopsidedness in a galactic disc, namely the fractional Fourier amplitude A$_1$ increases smoothly with the radius. These lopsided patterns precess in the disc with a very slow pattern speed with no preferred sense of precession. We show that the lopsided modes in the stellar disc are long-lived because of a substantial reduction ($\sim$ a factor of 10 compared to the local free precession rate) in the differential precession. The numerical solution of the equations shows that the ground-state lopsided modes are either very slowly precessing stationary normal mode oscillations of the disc or growing modes with a slow growth rate depending on the relative importance of the collective effect of the self-gravity. N-body simulations are performed to test the spontaneous growth of lopsidedness in a pure stellar disc. Both approaches are then compared and interpreted in terms of long-lived global $m=1$ instabilities, with almost zero pattern speed.

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arXiv2007

Molecular gas in high-velocity clouds: revisited scenario

We report a new search for 12CO(1-0) emission in high-velocity clouds (HVCs) performed with the IRAM 30 m telescope. This search was motivated by the recent detection of cold dust emission in the HVCs of Complex C. Despite a spatial resolution which is three times better and sensitivity twice as good compared to previous studies, no CO emission is detected in the HVCs of Complex C down to a best 5 sigma limit of 0.16 K km/s at a 22'' resolution. The CO emission non-detection does not provide any evidence in favor of large amounts of molecular gas in these HVCs and hence in favor of the infrared findings. We discuss different configurations which, however, allow us to reconcile the negative CO result with the presence of molecular gas and cold dust emission. H2 column densities higher than our detection limit, N(H2) = 3x10^{19} cm^{-2}, are expected to be confined in very small and dense clumps with 20 times smaller sizes than the 0.5 pc clumps resolved in our observations according to the results obtained in cirrus clouds, and might thus still be highly diluted. As a consequence, the inter-clump gas at the 1 pc scale has a volume density lower than 20 cm^{-3} and already appears as too diffuse to excite the CO molecules. The observed physical conditions in the HVCs of Complex C also play an important role against CO emission detection. It has been shown that the CO-to-H2 conversion factor in low metallicity media is 60 times higher than at the solar metallicity, leading for a given H2 column density to a 60 times weaker integrated CO intensity. And the very low dust temperature estimated in these HVCs implies the possible presence of gas cold enough (< 20 K) to cause CO condensation onto dust grains under interstellar medium pressure conditions and thus CO depletion in gas-phase observations.

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arXiv2007

Molecular clouds in the center of M81

We investigate the molecular gas content and the excitation and fragmentation properties in the central region of the spiral galaxy Messier 81 in both the ^{12}CO(1-0) and ^{12}CO(2-1) transitions. We have recently observed the two transitions of CO in the M~81 center with A, B, and HERA receivers of the IRAM 30-m telescope. We find no CO emission in the inner $\sim$ 300 pc and a weak molecular gas clump structure at a distance of around 460 pc from the nucleus. Observations of the first two CO transitions allowed us to compute the line ratio, and the average I_{21}/I_{10} ratio is 0.68 for the M~81 center. This low value, atypical both of the galactic nuclei of spiral galaxies and of interacting systems, is probably associated to diffuse gas with molecular hydrogen density that is not high enough to excite the CO molecules. After analyzing the clumping properties of the molecular gas in detail, we identify very massive giant molecular associations (GMAs) in CO(2-1) emission with masses of $\sim$ 10$^{5}$ M$_\odot$ and diameters of $\sim$ 250 pc. The deduced N(H_{2})/I_{CO} ratio for the individually resolved GMAs, assumed to be virialized, is a factor of $\sim$ 15 higher than the \textit{standard} Galactic value, showing - as suspected - that the X ratio departs significantly from the mean for galaxies with an unusual physics of the molecular gas.

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arXiv2007

Star formation in isolated AMIGA galaxies: dynamical influence of bars

Star formation depends strongly both on the local environment of galaxies, and on the internal dynamics of the interstellar medium. To disentangle the two effects, we obtained, in the framework of the AMIGA project, Ha and Gunn r photometric data for more than 200 spiral galaxies lying in very low-density regions of the local Universe. We characterise the Ha emission, tracing current star formation, of the 45 largest and less inclined galaxies observed for which we estimate the torques between the gas and the bulk of the optical matter. We could subsequently study the Ha morphological aspect of these isolated spiral galaxies. Using Fourier analysis, we focus on the modes of the spiral arms and also on the strength of the bars, computing the torques between the gas and newly formed stars (Ha) and the bulk of the optical matter (Gunn r). We interpret the various bar/spiral morphologies observed in terms of the secular evolution experienced by galaxies in isolation. We also classify the different spatial distributions of star forming regions in barred galaxies. The observed frequency of particular patterns brings constraints on the lifetime of the various evolution phases. We propose an evolutive sequence accounting for the transitions between the different phases we could observe. Isolated galaxies appear not to be preferentially barred or unbarred. Through numerical simulations, trying to fit the Ha distributions yields constraints on the star formation law, which is likely to differ from a genuine Schmidt law. In particular, it is probable that the relative velocity of the gas in the bar also needs to be taken into account.

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arXiv2007

Molecular content of a type-Ia SN host galaxy at z=0.6

We study the properties and the molecular content of the host of a type-Ia supernova (SN1997ey). This z=0.575 host is the brightest submillimetre source of the sample of type-Ia supernova hosts observed at 450um and 850um by Farrah et al.. Observations were performed at IRAM-30m to search for CO(2-1) and CO(3-2) lines in good weather conditions but no signal was detected. The star formation rate cannot exceed 50 M_sol/yr. These negative results are confronted with an optical analysis of a Keck spectrum and other data archives. We reach the conclusion that this galaxy is a late-type system (0.7 L^B_*), with a small residual star-formation activity (0.2 M_sol/yr) detected in the optical. No source of heating (AGN or starburst) is found to explain the submillimetre-continuum flux and the non-CO detection excludes the presence of a large amount of cold gas. We thus suggest that either the star formation activity is hidden in the nucleus (with A_V ~ 4) or this galaxy is passive or anemic and this flux might be associated with a background galaxy.

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arXiv2007

Lyman-alpha radiative transfer during the Epoch of Reionization: contribution to 21-cm signal fluctuations

During the epoch of reionization, Ly-alpha photons emitted by the first stars can couple the neutral hydrogen spin temperature to the kinetic gas temperature, providing the opportunity to observe the gas in emission or absorption in the 21-cm line. Given the bright foregrounds, it is of prime importance to determine precisely the fluctuations signature of the signal, to be able to extract it by its correlation power. LICORICE is a Monte-Carlo radiative transfer code, coupled to the dynamics via an adaptative Tree-SPH code. We present here the Ly-alpha part of the implementation, and validate it through three classical tests. Contrary to previous works, we do not assume that P_alpha, the number of scatterings of Ly-alpha photons per atom per second, is proportional to the Ly-alpha background flux, but take into account the scatterings in the Ly-alpha line wings. The latter have the effect to steepen the radial profile of P_alpha around each source, and re-inforce the contrast of the fluctuations. In the particular geometry of cosmic filaments of baryonic matter, Ly-alpha photons are scattered out of the filament, and the large scale structure of P_alpha is significantly anisotropic. This could have strong implications for the possible detection of the 21-cm signal.

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arXiv2007

Tidal dwarf galaxies as a test of fundamental physics

Within the cold dark matter (CDM) framework tidal dwarf galaxies (TDGs) cannot contain dark matter, so the recent results by Bournaud et al. (2007) that 3 rotating TDGs do show significant evidence for being dark matter dominated is inconsistent with the current concordance cosmological theory unless yet another dark matter component is postulated. We confirm that the TDG rotation curves are consistent with Newtonian dynamics only if either an additional dark matter component is postulated, or if all 3 TDGs happen to be viewed nearly edge-on, which is unlikely given the geometry of the tidal debris. We also find that the observed rotation curves are very naturally explained without any free parameters within the modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) framework if inclinations are adopted as derived by Bournaud et al. We explore different inclination angles and two different assumptions about the external field effect. The results do not change significantly, and we conclude therefore that Newtonian dynamics has severe problems while MOND does exceedingly well in explaining the observed rotation curves of the 3 TDGs studied by Bournaud et al.

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arXiv2007

Infall and accretion

Gas infall and accretion play a fundamental role in galaxy formation, and several processes of accretion are reviewed. In particular the cold accretion may solve to some extent the angular momentum problem in disk formation, while it is aggravated by mergers. Gas accretion is one of the main actor in secular evolution: it is required to account for recurrent bar formation, and to explain the feedback cycles of formation of bulges and black holes, with correlated masses. Infall is also required to fuel a regular and almost stationary star formation history. Star formation is quenched for galaxy in clusters when gas accretion is suppressed through stripping. The central brighter central galaxy can benefit however of gas accretion through cooling flows, moderated by AGN feedback. Hot and cold feedback scenarios can be considered, to account for a stationary cooling flow, and explain the filamentary CO and Halpha observed structures.

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arXiv2007

Loss of mass and stability of galaxies in MOND

The self-binding energy and stability of a galaxy in MOND-based gravity are curiously decreasing functions of its center of mass acceleration towards neighbouring mass concentrations. A tentative indication of this breaking of the Strong Equivalence Principle in field galaxies is the RAVE-observed escape speed in the Milky Way. Another consequence is that satellites of field galaxies will move on nearly Keplerian orbits at large radii (100 - 500 kpc), with a declining speed below the asymptotically constant naive MOND prediction. But consequences of an environment-sensitive gravity are even more severe in clusters, where member galaxies accelerate fast: no more Dark-Halo-like potential is present to support galaxies, meaning that extended axisymmetric disks of gas and stars are likely unstable. These predicted reappearance of asymptotic Keplerian velocity curves and disappearance of "stereotypic galaxies" in clusters are falsifiable with targeted surveys.

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arXiv2007

Molecular gas and star formation in M81

We present IRAM 30m observations of the central 1.6 kpc of the spiral M81 galaxy. The molecular gas appears weak and with an unusual excitation physics. We discuss a possible link between low CO emission and weak FUV surface brightness.

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