Galaxy formation and evolution

Abstract:

We present an alternative method to X-ray surveys for hunting down the high-redshift type-2 quasar population, using Spitzer and VLA data on the Spitzer First Look Survey. By demanding objects to be bright at 24 μm but faint at 3.6 μm, and combining this with a radio criterion, we find 21 type-2 radio-quiet quasar candidates at the epoch at which the quasar activity peaked. Optical spectroscopy with the WHT confirmed 10 of these objects to be type-2s with 1.4 ≤ z ≤ 4.2 while the rest are blank. There is no evidence for contamination in our sample, and we postulate that our 11 blank-spectrum candidates are obscured by kpc-scale dust as opposed to dust from a torus around the accretion disk. By carefully modelling our selection criteria, we conclude that, at high redshift, 50-80 % of the supermassive black hole growth is obscured by dust. ©2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

Abstract:

We present the results of a study which uses the 3CRR sample of radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGN) to investigate the evolution of the hlack-hole: spheroid relation in the most massive early-type galaxies from 0 < z < 2. Radioloud unification is exploited to obtain virial (line-width) black-hole mass estimates from the 3CRR quasars, and stellar mass estimates from the 3CRR radio galaxies, thereby providing black-hole and stellar mass estimates for a single population of early-type galaxies. At low redshift (z < 1) the 3CRR sample is consistent with a black-hole:spheroid ratio of Mbh/Msph ≃ 0.002, in good agreement with that observed locally for quiescent galaxies of similar stellar mass (Msph ≃ 5 × 10 11M⊙). However, over the redshift interval 0 < z < 2 the 3CRR black-hole:spheroid ratio is found to evolve as M bh/Msph ∝ (1 + z)2-07±0.76, reaching Mbh/Msph ≃ 0.008 by redshift z ≃ 2. This evolution is found to be inconsistent with the local black-hole:spheroid ratio remaining constant at a moderately significant level (98%). If confirmed, the detection of evolution in the 3CRR black-hole:spheroid mass ratio further strengthens the evidence that, at least for massive early-type galaxies, the growth of the central supermassive black hole may be completed before that of the host spheroid. © 2006 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA.

Abstract:

Debye-like screening by edge dislocations of some externally given stress is studied by means of a variational approach to coarse grained field theory. Explicitly given are the force field and the induced geometrically necessary dislocation (GND) distribution, in the special case of a single glide axis in 2D, for (i) a single edge dislocation and (ii) a dislocation wall. Numerical simulation demonstrates that the correlation in relaxed dislocation configurations is in good agreement with the induced GND in case (i). Furthermore, the result (ii) well predicts the experimentally observed decay length for the GND developing close to grain boundaries.

Abstract:

[Abridged] We use mock catalogues based on the GALICS model (Hatton et al. 03) to explore the nature of galaxy clustering observed in the SDSS. We measure low and high order angular clustering statistic from these mock catalogues, after selecting galaxies the same way as for observations, and compare them directly to estimates from SDSS data. Note that we also present measurements of S3-S5 on the SDSS DR1. We find that our model is in general good agreement with observations in the scale/luminosity range where we can trust the predictions. This range is found to be limited (i) by the size of the dark matter simulation used -- which introduces finite volume effects at large scales -- and by the mass resolution of this simulation -- which introduces incompleteness at apparent magnitudes fainter than $r\sim 20$. We then focus on the small scale clustering properties of galaxies and investigate the behaviour of three different prescriptions for positioning galaxies within haloes of dark matter. We show that galaxies are poor tracers both of DM particles or DM sub-structures, within groups and clusters. Instead, SDSS data tells us that the distribution of galaxies lies somewhat in between these two populations. This confirms the general theoretical expectation from numerical simulations and semi-analytic modelling.