arXiv subjects

Shude Mao

Publications and source records attributed to Shude Mao.

At least 217 records · Page 12Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

UVI colour gradients of 0.4<z<1.4 star-forming main sequence galaxies in CANDELS: dust extinction and star formation profiles

This paper uses radial colour profiles to infer the distributions of dust, gas and star formation in z=0.4-1.4 star-forming main sequence galaxies. We start with the standard UVJ-based method to estimate dust extinction and specific star formation rate (sSFR). By replacing J with I band, a new calibration method suitable for use with ACS+WFC3 data is created (i.e. UVI diagram). Using a multi-wavelength multi-aperture photometry catalogue based on CANDELS, UVI colour profiles of 1328 galaxies are stacked in stellar mass and redshift bins. The resulting colour gradients, covering a radial range of 0.2--2.0 effective radii, increase strongly with galaxy mass and with global $A_V$. Colour gradient directions are nearly parallel to the Calzetti extinction vector, indicating that dust plays a more important role than stellar population variations. With our calibration, the resulting $A_V$ profiles fall much more slowly than stellar mass profiles over the measured radial range. sSFR gradients are nearly flat without central quenching signatures, except for $M_*>10^{10.5} M_{\odot}$, where central declines of 20--25 per cent are observed. Both sets of profiles agree well with previous radial sSFR and (continuum) $A_V$ measurements. They are also consistent with the sSFR profiles and, if assuming a radially constant gas-to-dust ratio, gas profiles in recent hydrodynamic models. We finally discuss the striking findings that SFR scales with stellar mass density in the inner parts of galaxies, and that dust content is high in the outer parts despite low stellar-mass surface densities there.

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arXiv2017

MOA-2016-BLG-227Lb: A Massive Planet Characterized by Combining Lightcurve Analysis and Keck AO Imaging

We report the discovery of a microlensing planet --- MOA-2016-BLG-227Lb --- with a large planet/host mass ratio of $q \simeq 9 \times 10^{-3}$. This event was located near the $K2$ Campaign 9 field that was observed by a large number of telescopes. As a result, the event was in the microlensing survey area of a number of these telescopes, and this enabled good coverage of the planetary light curve signal. High angular resolution adaptive optics images from the Keck telescope reveal excess flux at the position of the source above the flux of the source star, as indicated by the light curve model. This excess flux could be due to the lens star, but it could also be due to a companion to the source or lens star, or even an unrelated star. We consider all these possibilities in a Bayesian analysis in the context of a standard Galactic model. Our analysis indicates that it is unlikely that a large fraction of the excess flux comes from the lens, unless solar type stars are much more likely to host planets of this mass ratio than lower mass stars. We recommend that a method similar to the one developed in this paper be used for other events with high angular resolution follow-up observations when the follow-up observations are insufficient to measure the lens-source relative proper motion.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2017

SDSS-IV MaNGA: variation of the stellar initial mass function in spiral and early-type galaxies

We perform Jeans anisotropic modeling (JAM) on elliptical and spiral galaxies from the MaNGA DR13 sample. By comparing the stellar mass-to-light ratios estimated from stellar population synthesis (SPS) and from JAM, we find a similar systematic variation of the initial mass function (IMF) as in the earlier $\rm ATLAS^{3D}$ results. Early type galaxies (elliptical and lenticular) with lower velocity dispersions within one effective radius are consistent with a Chabrier-like IMF while galaxies with higher velocity dispersions are consistent with a more bottom heavy IMF such as the Salpeter IMF. Spiral galaxies have similar systematic IMF variations, but with slightly different slopes and larger scatters, due to the uncertainties caused by higher gas fractions and extinctions for these galaxies. Furthermore, we examine the effects of stellar mass-to-light ratio gradients on our JAM modeling, and find that the trends from our results becomes stronger after considering the gradients.

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arXiv2017

Project Overview of the Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey

The Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey (BASS) is a wide-field two-band photometric survey of the Northern Galactic Cap using the 90Prime imager on the 2.3 m Bok telescope at Kitt Peak. It is a four-year collaboration between the National Astronomical Observatory of China and Steward Observatory, the University of Arizona, serving as one of the three imaging surveys to provide photometric input catalogs for target selection of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) project. BASS will take up to 240 dark/grey nights to cover an area of about 5400 deg$^2$ in the $g$ and $r$ bands. The 5$σ$ limiting AB magnitudes for point sources in the two bands, corrected for the Galactic extinction, are 24.0 and 23.4 mag, respectively. BASS, together with other DESI imaging surveys, will provide unique science opportunities that cover a wide range of topics in both Galactic and extragalactic astronomy.

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arXiv2017

Discovery of a Very Bright and Intrinsically Very Luminous, Strongly Lensed Lyα Emitting Galaxy at z = 2.82 in the BOSS Emission-Line Lens Survey

We report the discovery of a very bright (r = 20.16), highly magnified, and yet intrinsically very luminous Lyα emitter (LAE) at z = 2.82. This system comprises four images in the observer plane with a maximum separation of ~ 6" and it is lensed by a z = 0.55 massive early-type galaxy. It was initially identified in the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) Emission-Line Lens Survey for GALaxy-Lyα EmitteR sYstems (BELLS GALLERY) survey, and follow-up imaging and spectroscopic observations using the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) and William Herschel Telescope (WHT) confirmed the lensing nature of this system. A lens model using a singular isothermal ellipsoid in an external shear field reproduces quite well the main features of the system, yielding an Einstein radius of 2.95" +/- 0.10", and a total magnification factor for the LAE of 8.8 +/- 0.4. This LAE is one of the brightest and most luminous galaxy-galaxy strong lenses known. We present initial imaging and spectroscopy showing the basic physical and morphological properties of this lensed system.

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arXiv2016

The BOSS Emission-Line Lens Survey. IV. : Smooth Lens Models for the BELLS GALLERY Sample

We present \textsl{Hubble Space Telescope} (\textsl{HST}) F606W-band imaging observations of 21 galaxy-Ly$α$ emitter lens candidates in the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) Emission-Line Lens Survey (BELLS) for GALaxy-Ly$α$ EmitteR sYstems (BELLS GALLERY) survey. 17 systems are confirmed to be definite lenses with unambiguous evidence of multiple imaging. The lenses are primarily massive early-type galaxies (ETGs) at redshifts of approximately $0.55$, while the lensed sources are Ly$α$ emitters (LAEs) at redshifts from 2 to 3. Although the \textsl{HST} imaging data are well fit by smooth lens models consisting of singular isothermal ellipsoids in an external shear field, a thorough exploration of dark substructures in the lens galaxies is required. The Einstein radii of the BELLS GALLERY lenses are on average $60\%$ larger than those of the BELLS lenses because of the much higher source redshifts which will allow a detailed investigation of the radius evolution of the mass profile in ETGs. With the aid of the average $\sim 13 \times$ lensing magnification, the LAEs are resolved to comprise individual star-forming knots of a wide range of properties with characteristic sizes from less than 100 pc to several kpc, rest-frame far UV apparent AB magnitudes from 29.6 to 24.2, and typical projected separations of 500 pc to 2 kpc.

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arXiv2016

SDSS-IV MaNGA: environmental dependence of stellar age and metallicity gradients in nearby galaxies

We present a study on the stellar age and metallicity distributions for 1105 galaxies using the STARLIGHT software on MaNGA integral field spectra. We derive age and metallicity gradients by fitting straight lines to the radial profiles, and explore their correlations with total stellar mass M*, NUV-r colour and environments, as identified by both the large scale structure (LSS) type and the local density. We find that the mean age and metallicity gradients are close to zero but slightly negative, which is consistent with the inside-out formation scenario. Within our sample, we find that both the age and metallicity gradients show weak or no correlation with either the LSS type or local density environment. In addition, we also study the environmental dependence of age and metallicity values at the effective radii. The age and metallicity values are highly correlated with M* and NUV-r and are also dependent on LSS type as well as local density. Low-mass galaxies tend to be younger and have lower metallicity in low-density environments while high-mass galaxies are less affected by environment.

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arXiv2016

Orbital classification in an N-body bar

The dynamics and evolution of any galactic structure are strongly influenced by the properties of the orbits that constitute it. In this paper, we compare two orbit classification schemes, one by Laskar (NAFF) , and the other by Carpintero and Aguilar (CA), by applying both of them to orbits obtained by following individual particles in a numerical simulation of a barred galaxy. We find that, at least for our case and some provisos, the main frequencies calculated by the two methods are in good agreement: for $80\%$ of the orbits the difference between the results of the two methods is less than $5\%$ for all three main frequencies. However, it is difficult to evaluate the amount of regular or chaotic bar orbits in a given system. The fraction of regular orbits obtained by the NAFF method strongly depends on the critical frequency drift parameter, while in the CA method the number of fundamental frequencies strongly depends on the frequency difference parameter $L_{\rm r}$ and the maximum integer used for searching the linear independence of the fundamental frequencies. We also find that, for a given particle, in general the projection of its motion along the bar minor axis is more regular than the other two projections, while the projection along the intermediate axis is the least regular.

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arXiv2016

The InfraRed Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) for TMT: latest science cases and simulations

The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) first light instrument IRIS (Infrared Imaging Spectrograph) will complete its preliminary design phase in 2016. The IRIS instrument design includes a near-infrared (0.85 - 2.4 micron) integral field spectrograph (IFS) and imager that are able to conduct simultaneous diffraction-limited observations behind the advanced adaptive optics system NFIRAOS. The IRIS science cases have continued to be developed and new science studies have been investigated to aid in technical performance and design requirements. In this development phase, the IRIS science team has paid particular attention to the selection of filters, gratings, sensitivities of the entire system, and science cases that will benefit from the parallel mode of the IFS and imaging camera. We present new science cases for IRIS using the latest end-to-end data simulator on the following topics: Solar System bodies, the Galactic center, active galactic nuclei (AGN), and distant gravitationally-lensed galaxies. We then briefly discuss the necessity of an advanced data management system and data reduction pipeline.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2016

SDSS-IV MaNGA IFS Galaxy Survey --- Survey Design, Execution, and Initial Data Quality

The MaNGA Survey (Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory) is one of three core programs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV. It is obtaining integral field spectroscopy (IFS) for 10K nearby galaxies at a spectral resolution of R~2000 from 3,622-10,354A. The design of the survey is driven by a set of science requirements on the precision of estimates of the following properties: star formation rate surface density, gas metallicity, stellar population age, metallicity, and abundance ratio, and their gradients; stellar and gas kinematics; and enclosed gravitational mass as a function of radius. We describe how these science requirements set the depth of the observations and dictate sample selection. The majority of targeted galaxies are selected to ensure uniform spatial coverage in units of effective radius (Re) while maximizing spatial resolution. About 2/3 of the sample is covered out to 1.5Re (Primary sample), and 1/3 of the sample is covered to 2.5Re (Secondary sample). We describe the survey execution with details that would be useful in the design of similar future surveys. We also present statistics on the achieved data quality, specifically, the point spread function, sampling uniformity, spectral resolution, sky subtraction, and flux calibration. For our Primary sample, the median r-band signal-to-noise ratio is ~73 per 1.4A pixel for spectra stacked between 1-1.5 Re. Measurements of various galaxy properties from the first year data show that we are meeting or exceeding the defined requirements for the majority of our science goals.

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arXiv2016

The BOSS Emission-Line Lens Survey. III. : Strong Lensing of Ly$α$ Emitters by Individual Galaxies

We introduce the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) Emission-Line Lens Survey (BELLS) for GALaxy-Ly$α$ EmitteR sYstems (BELLS GALLERY) Survey, which is a Hubble Space Telescope program to image a sample of galaxy-scale strong gravitational lens candidate systems with high-redshift Ly$α$ emitters (LAEs) as the background sources. The goal of the BELLS GALLERY Survey is to illuminate dark substructures in galaxy-scale halos by exploiting the small-scale clumpiness of rest-frame far-UV emission in lensed LAEs, and to thereby constrain the slope and normalization of the substructure-mass function. In this paper, we describe in detail the spectroscopic strong-lens selection technique, which is based on methods adopted in the previous Sloan Lens ACS (SLACS) Survey, BELLS, and SLACS for the Masses Survey. We present the BELLS GALLERY sample of the 21 highest-quality galaxy--LAE candidates selected from $\approx 1.4 \times 10^6$ galaxy spectra in the BOSS of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III. These systems consist of massive galaxies at redshifts of approximately 0.5 strongly lensing LAEs at redshifts from 2--3. The compact nature of LAEs makes them an ideal probe of dark substructures, with a substructure-mass sensitivity that is unprecedented in other optical strong-lens samples. The magnification effect from lensing will also reveal the structure of LAEs below 100 pc scales, providing a detailed look at the sites of the most concentrated unobscured star formation in the universe. The source code used for candidate selection is available for download as a part of this release.

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arXiv2016

Free-floating planets from core accretion theory: microlensing predictions

We calculate the microlensing event rate and typical time-scales for the free-floating planet (FFP) population that is predicted by the core accretion theory of planet formation. The event rate is found to be ~$1.8\times 10^{-3}$ of that for the stellar population. While the stellar microlensing event time-scale peaks at around 20 days, the median time-scale for FFP events (~0.1 day) is much shorter. Our values for the event rate and the median time-scale are significantly smaller than those required to explain the \cite{Sum+11} result, by factors of ~13 and ~16, respectively. The inclusion of planets at wide separations does not change the results significantly. This discrepancy may be too significant for standard versions of both the core accretion theory and the gravitational instability model to explain satisfactorily. Therefore, either a modification to the planet formation theory is required, or other explanations to the excess of short-time-scale microlensing events are needed. Our predictions can be tested by ongoing microlensing experiment such as KMTNet, and by future satellite missions such as WFIRST and Euclid.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2016

The UV-optical Color Gradients in Star-Forming Galaxies at 0.5<z<1.5: Origins and Link to Galaxy Assembly

The rest-frame UV-optical (i.e., NUV-B) color index is sensitive to the low-level recent star formation and dust extinction, but it is insensitive to the metallicity. In this Letter, we have measured the rest-frame NUV-B color gradients in ~1400 large ($\rm r_e>0.18^{\prime\prime}$), nearly face-on (b/a>0.5) main-sequence star-forming galaxies (SFGs) between redshift 0.5 and 1.5 in the CANDELS/GOODS-S and UDS fields. With this sample, we study the origin of UV-optical color gradients in the SFGs at z~1 and discuss their link with the buildup of stellar mass. We find that the more massive, centrally compact, and more dust extinguished SFGs tend to have statistically more negative raw color gradients (redder centers) than the less massive, centrally diffuse, and less dusty SFGs. After correcting for dust reddening based on optical-SED fitting, the color gradients in the low-mass ($M_{\ast} <10^{10}M_{\odot}$) SFGs generally become quite flat, while most of the high-mass ($M_{\ast} > 10^{10.5}M_{\odot}$) SFGs still retain shallow negative color gradients. These findings imply that dust reddening is likely the principal cause of negative color gradients in the low-mass SFGs, while both increased central dust reddening and buildup of compact old bulges are likely the origins of negative color gradients in the high-mass SFGs. These findings also imply that at these redshifts the low-mass SFGs buildup their stellar masses in a self-similar way, while the high-mass SFGs grow inside out.

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arXiv2016

The role of major gas-rich mergers on the evolution of galaxies from the blue cloud to the red sequence

With the aim of exploring the fast evolutionary path from the blue cloud of star-forming galaxies to the red sequence of quiescent galaxies in the local universe, we select a local advanced merging infrared luminous and ultraluminous galaxy (adv-merger (U)LIRGs) sample and perform careful dust extinction corrections to investigate their positions in the SFR-$M_{\ast}$, u-r and NUV-r color-mass diagrams. The sample consists of 89 (U)LIRGs at the late merger stage, obtained from cross-correlating the IRAS Point Source Catalog Redshift Survey and 1 Jy ULIRGs samples with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR7 database. Our results show that $74\%\pm 5\%$ of adv-merger (U)LIRGs are localized above the $1\, σ$ line of the local star-forming galaxy main sequence. We also find that all adv-merger (U)LIRGs are more massive than and as blue as the blue cloud galaxies after corrections of Galactic and internal dust extinctions, with $95\%\pm 2\%$ and $81\%\pm 4\%$ of them outside the blue cloud on the u-r and NUV-r color-mass diagrams, respectively. These results, combined with the short timescale for exhausting the molecular gas reservoir in adv-merger (U)LIRGs ($3\times 10^{7}$ to $3\times 10^{8}$ years), imply that the adv-merger (U)LIRGs are likely at the starting point of the fast evolutionary track previously proposed by several groups. While the number density of adv-merger (U)LIRGs is only $\sim 0.1\%$ of the blue cloud star-forming galaxies in the local universe, this evolutionary track may play a more important role at high redshift.

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arXiv2015

Assessing the Jeans Anisotropic Multi-Gaussian Expansion method with the Illustris simulation

We assess the effectiveness of the Jeans-Anisotropic-MGE (JAM) technique with a state-of-the-art cosmological hydrodynamic simulation, the Illustris project. We perform JAM modelling on 1413 simulated galaxies with stellar mass M^* > 10^{10}M_{sun}, and construct an axisymmetric dynamical model for each galaxy. Combined with a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) simulation, we recover the projected root-mean-square velocity (V_rms) field of the stellar component, and investigate constraints on the stellar mass-to-light ratio, M^*/L, and the fraction of dark matter f_{DM} within 2.5 effective radii (R_e). We find that the enclosed total mass within 2.5 R_e is well constrained to within 10%. However, there is a degeneracy between the dark matter and stellar components with correspondingly larger individual errors. The 1 sigma scatter in the recovered M^*/L is 30-40% of the true value. The accuracy of the recovery of M^*/L depends on the triaxial shape of a galaxy. There is no significant bias for oblate galaxies, while for prolate galaxies the JAM-recovered stellar mass is on average 18% higher than the input values. We also find that higher image resolutions alleviate the dark matter and stellar mass degeneracy and yield systematically better parameter recovery.

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arXiv2015

Determining the local dark matter density with LAMOST data

Measurement of the local dark matter density plays an important role in both Galactic dynamics and dark matter direct detection experiments. However, the estimated values from previous works are far from agreeing with each other. In this work, we provide a well-defined observed sample with 1427 G \& K type main-sequence stars from the LAMOST spectroscopic survey, taking into account selection effects, volume completeness, and the stellar populations. We apply a vertical Jeans equation method containing a single exponential stellar disk, a razor thin gas disk, and a constant dark matter density distribution to the sample, and obtain a total surface mass density of $\rm {78.7 ^{+3.9}_{-4.7}\ M_{\odot}\ pc^{-2}}$ up to 1 kpc and a local dark matter density of $0.0159^{+0.0047}_{-0.0057}\,\rm M_{\odot}\,\rm pc^{-3}$. We find that the sampling density (i.e. number of stars per unit volume) of the spectroscopic data contributes to about two-thirds of the uncertainty in the estimated values. We discuss the effect of the tilt term in the Jeans equation and find it has little impact on our measurement. Other issues, such as a non-equilibrium component due to perturbations and contamination by the thick disk population, are also discussed.

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arXiv2015

Combining time delays and image positions for quadruple lenses: a moment approach

Time delays in gravitational lenses can be used to determine the Hubble constant and the lens potential. In future surveys, many gravitational lenses can be discovered, and their time delays and image positions can in principle be measured. Using an elliptical power-law potential, we show that combinations of image positions and time delays for quadruple lenses yield simple analytical expressions that are connected with observable quantities. These relations can be used to obtain the approximate axis ratio q, the Einstein radius and the slope. We apply this method to RX J1131-1231, and show that our analytical results match the full numerical determinations approximately. Our approach can quickly determine rough values of lens parameters, which can then be used as initial guesses for further refinement through numerical modelling and may be useful for automated lens search in large surveys.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2015

On the diffuse soft X-ray emission from the nuclear region of M51

We present an analysis of the diffuse soft X-ray emission from the nuclear region of M51 combining both XMM-Newton RGS and Chandra data. Most of the RGS spectrum of M51 can be fitted with a thermal model with a temperature of $\sim0.5$ keV except for the OVII triplet, which is forbidden-line dominated. The Fe L-shell lines peak around the southern cloud, where the OVIII and NVII Lya lines also peak. In contrast, the peak of the OVII forbidden line is about 10$"$ offset from that of the other lines, indicating that it is from a spatially distinct component. The spatial distribution of the OVII triplet mapped by the Chandra data shows that most of the OVII triplet flux is located at faint regions near edges, instead of the southern cloud where other lines peak. This distribution of the OVII triplet is inconsistent with the photoionization model. Other mechanisms that could produce the anomalous OVII triplet, including a recombining plasma and charge exchange X-ray emission, are discussed.

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