Search

Local low metallicity galaxies with signatures of possible accretion activity are ideal laboratories in which to search for the lowest mass black holes and study their impact on the host galaxy. Here we present the first JWST NIRSpec IFS observations of SDSS J120122.30+021108.3, a nearby ($z=0.00354$) extremely metal poor dwarf galaxy with no optical signatures of accretion activity but identified by WISE to have extremely red mid-infrared colors consistent with AGNs. We identify over one hundred lines between $\sim$ 1.7-5.2 microns, an unresolved nuclear continuum source with an extremely steep spectral slope consistent with hot dust from an AGN ($F_\nu \approx\nu^{-1.5}$), and a plethora of H I, He I, and H$_2$ lines, with no lines from heavier elements, CO or ice absorption features, or PAHs.Our observations reveal that the red WISE source arises exclusively from a bright central unresolved source ($<$ 3pc) suggestive of an AGN, yet there are no He II lines or coronal lines identified in the spectrum, and, importantly, there is no evidence that the radiation field is harder in the nuclear source compared with surrounding regions. These observations can be explained with a young ($<$ 5 Myr) nuclear star cluster with stellar mass $\sim3\times 10^4$ M$_\odot$ and a deeply embedded AGN with bolometric luminosity $\sim$ $2\times10^{41}$ ergs $^{-1}$. The implied black hole mass is $\sim$ 1450 M$_\odot$, based on the Eddington limit, roughly consistent with that expected based on extrapolations of black hole galaxy scaling relations derived for more massive black holes. Longer wavelength observations are crucial to confirm this scenario., Comment: submitted to ApJ; comments welcome

The effect of dust attenuation on a galaxy's light depends on a number of physical properties, such as geometry and dust composition, both of which can vary across the faces of galaxies. To investigate this variation, we continue analysis on star-forming regions in 29 galaxies studied previously. We analyse these regions using Swift/UVOT and WISE images, as well as SDSS/MaNGA emission line maps to constrain the relationship between the infrared excess (IRX) and the UV spectral index (beta) for each star forming region. This relationship can be used to constrain which dust attenuation law is appropriate for the region. We find that the value of Dn(4000) for a region is correlated with both IRX and beta, and that the gas-phase metallicity is strongly correlated with the IRX. This correlation between metallicity and IRX suggests that regardless of aperture, metal rich regions have steeper attenuation curves. We also find that integrated galactic light follows nearly the same IRX-beta relationship as that found for kiloparsec-sized star forming regions. This similarity may suggest that the attenuation law followed by the galaxy is essentially the same as that followed by the regions, although the relatively large size of our star forming regions complicates this interpretation because optical opacity and attenuation curves have been observed to vary within individual galaxies., Comment: Accepted to MNRAS September 5, 2023

We develop a novel approach to measure dust attenuation properties of galaxies, including the dust opacity, shape of the attenuation curve and the strength of the 2175{\AA} absorption feature. From an observed spectrum, the method uses a model-independent approach to derive a relative attenuation curve, with absolute amplitude calibrated using NIR photometry. The dust-corrected spectrum is fitted with stellar population models to derive the dust-free model spectrum, which is compared with the observed SED/spectrum from NUV to NIR to determine dust attenuation properties. We apply this method to investigate dust attenuation on kpc scales, using a sample of 134 galaxies with integral field spectroscopy from MaNGA, NIR imaging from 2MASS, and NUV imaging from Swift/UVOT. We find the attenuation curve slope and the 2175{\AA} bump in both optical and NUV span a wide range at kpc scales. The slope is shallower at higher optical opacity, regardless of the specific star formation rate (sSFR), minor-to-major axis ratio (b/a) of galaxies and the location of spaxels within individual galaxies. The 2175{\AA} bump presents a strong negative correlation with the sSFR, while the correlations with the optical opacity, b/a and the location within individual galaxies are all weak. All these trends appear to be independent of the stellar mass of galaxies. Our results support the scenario that the variation of the 2175{\AA} bump is driven predominantly by processes related to star formation, such as the destruction of small dust grains by UV radiation in star-forming regions., Comment: 21 pages,9 figures, APJ accepted version

Upcoming missions such as Euclid and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman) will use emission-line selected galaxies to address a variety of questions in cosmology and galaxy evolution in the $z>1$ universe. The optimal observing strategy for these programs relies upon knowing the number of galaxies that will be found and the bias of the galaxy population. Here we measure the $\rm{[O\ III]}\ \lambda 5007$ luminosity function for a vetted sample of 1951 $m_{\rm J+JH+H} < 26$ galaxies with unambiguous redshifts between $1.90 < z < 2.35$, which were selected using HST/WFC3 G141 grism frames made available by the 3D-HST program. These systems are directly analogous to the galaxies that will be identified by the Euclid and Roman missions, which will utilize grism spectroscopy to find $\rm{[O\ III]}\ \lambda 5007$-emitting galaxies at $0.8 \lesssim z \lesssim 2.7$ and $1.7 \lesssim z \lesssim 2.8$, respectively. We interpret our results in the context of the expected number counts for these upcoming missions. Finally, we combine our dust-corrected $\rm{[O\ III]}$ luminosities with rest-frame ultraviolet star formation rates to present a new calibration of the SFR density associated with $1.90 < z < 2.35$ $\rm{[O\ III]}$-emitting galaxies. We find that these grism-selected galaxies contain roughly half of the total star formation activity at $z\sim2$., Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, accepted to ApJ

Nearby, low-metallicity dwarf starburst galaxies hosting active galactic nuclei (AGNs) offer the best local analogs to study the early evolution of galaxies and their supermassive black holes (BHs). Here we present a detailed multi-wavelength investigation of star formation and BH activity in the low-metallicity dwarf-dwarf galaxy merger Mrk 709. Using Hubble Space Telescope H$\alpha$ and continuum imaging combined with Keck spectroscopy, we determine that the two dwarf galaxies are likely in the early stages of a merger (i.e., their first pass) and discover a spectacular $\sim 10$ kpc-long string of young massive star clusters ($t \lesssim 10$ Myr; $M_\star \gtrsim 10^5~M_\odot$) between the galaxies triggered by the interaction. We find that the southern galaxy, Mrk 709 S, is undergoing a clumpy mode of star formation resembling that seen in high-redshift galaxies, with multiple young clusters/clumps having stellar masses between $10^7$ and $10^8~M_\odot$. Furthermore, we present additional evidence for a low-luminosity AGN in Mrk 709 S (first identified by Reines et al. 2014 (arXiv:1405.0278) using radio and X-ray observations), including the detection of the coronal [Fe X] optical emission line. The work presented here provides a unique glimpse into processes key to hierarchical galaxy formation and BH growth in the early Universe., Comment: Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal March 5, 2021. 14 pages, 7 figures

We present MCSED, a new spectral energy distribution (SED)-fitting code, which mates flexible stellar evolution calculations with the Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms of the software package emcee. MCSED takes broad, intermediate, and narrow-band photometry, emission-line fluxes, and/or absorption line spectral indices, and returns probability distributions and co-variance plots for all model parameters. MCSED includes a variety of dust attenuation curves with parameters for varying the UV slopes and bump strengths, a prescription for continuum and PAH emission from dust, models for continuum and line emission from ionized gas, options for fixed and variable stellar metallicity, and a selection of star formation rate (SFR) histories. The code is well-suited for exploring parameter inter-dependencies in sets of galaxies with known redshifts, for which there is multi-band photometry and/or spectroscopy. We apply MCSED to a sample of $\sim2000$ $1.90

The galaxy catalogs generated from low-resolution emission line surveys often contain both foreground and background interlopers due to line misidentification, which can bias the cosmological parameter estimation. In this paper, we present a method for correcting the interloper bias by using the joint-analysis of auto- and cross-power spectra of the main and the interloper samples. In particular, we can measure the interloper fractions from the cross-correlation between the interlopers and survey galaxies, because the true cross-correlation must be negligibly small. The estimated interloper fractions, in turn, remove the interloper bias in the cosmological parameter estimation. For example, in the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) low-redshift ($z<0.5$) [O II] $\lambda3727${\AA} emitters contaminate high-redshift ($1.9