Astronomical instrumentation

Abstract:

We present FLAMES/GIRAFFE integral field spectroscopy of 30 galaxies in the massive cluster A1689 at z = 0.183. Conducting an analysis similar to that of ATLAS3D, we extend the baseline of the kinematic morphology-density relation by an order of magnitude in projected density and show that it is possible to use existing instruments to identify slow and fast rotators beyond the local Universe. We find 4.5 ± 1.0 slow rotators with a distribution in magnitude similar to those in the Virgo cluster. The overall slow rotator fraction of our A1689 sample is 0.15 ± 0.03, the same as in Virgo using our selection criteria. This suggests that the fraction of slow rotators in a cluster is not strongly dependent on its density. However, within A1689, we find that the fraction of slow rotators increases towards the centre, as was also found in the Virgo cluster. © 2012 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Abstract:

This paper describes a measurement of the flavour composition of dijet events produced in pp collisions at s√=7~TeVs=7~TeV using the ATLAS detector. The measurement uses the full 2010 data sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 39 pb−1. Six possible combinations of light, charm and bottom jets are identified in the dijet events, where the jet flavour is defined by the presence of bottom, charm or solely light flavour hadrons in the jet. Kinematic variables, based on the properties of displaced decay vertices and optimised for jet flavour identification, are used in a multidimensional template fit to measure the fractions of these dijet flavour states as functions of the leading jet transverse momentum in the range 40 GeV to 500 GeV and jet rapidity |y|<2.1. The fit results agree with the predictions of leading- and next-to-leading-order calculations, with the exception of the dijet fraction composed of bottom and light flavour jets, which is underestimated by all models at large transverse jet momenta. The ability to identify jets containing two b-hadrons, originating from e.g. gluon splitting, is demonstrated. The difference between bottom jet production rates in leading and subleading jets is consistent with the next-to-leading-order predictions.

Abstract:

We use interferometric 12CO(1-0) observations to compare and contrast the extent, surface brightness profiles and kinematics of the molecular gas in CO-rich ATLAS3D early-type galaxies (ETGs) and spiral galaxies. We find that the molecular gas extent is smaller in absolute terms in ETGs than in late-type galaxies, but that the size distributions are similar once scaled by the galaxies optical/stellar characteristic scalelengths. Amongst ETGs, we find that the extent of the gas is independent of its kinematic misalignment (with respect to the stars), but does depend on the environment, with Virgo cluster ETGs having less extended molecular gas reservoirs, further emphasizing that cluster ETGs follow different evolutionary pathways from those in the field. Approximately half of ETGs have molecular gas surface brightness profiles that follow the stellar light profile. These systems often have relaxed gas out to large radii, suggesting they are unlikely to have had recent merger/accretion events. A third of the sample galaxies show molecular gas surface brightness profiles that fall off slower than the light, and sometimes show a truncation. These galaxies often have a low mass, and eitherhave disturbed molecular gas or are in the Virgo cluster, suggesting that recent mergers, ram pressure stripping and/or the presence of hot gas can compress/truncate the gas. The remaining galaxies have rings, or composite profiles, that we argue can be caused by the effects of bars. We investigated the kinematics of the molecular gas using position-velocity diagrams, and compared the observed kinematics with dynamical model predictions, and the observed stellar and ionized gas velocities. We confirm that the molecular gas reaches beyond the turnover of the circular velocity curve in~70 per cent of our CO-rich ATLAS3D ETGs, validating previous work on the CO Tully-Fisher relation. In general we find that in most galaxies the molecular gas is dynamically cold, and the observed CO rotation matches well model predictions of the circular velocity. In the galaxies with the largest molecular masses, dust obscuration and/or population gradients can cause model predictions of the circular velocity to disagree with observations of the molecular gas rotation; however, these effects are confined to the most star forming systems. Bars and non-equilibrium conditions can also make the gas deviate from circular orbits. In both these cases, one expects the model circular velocity to be higher than the observed CO velocity, in agreement with our observations. Molecular gas is a better direct tracer of the circular velocity than the ionized gas, justifying its use as a kinematic tracer for Tully-Fisher and similar analyses.