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Jets of energetic particles, as seen in FR type-I and FR type-II sources, ejected from the center of Radio-Loud AGN affect the sources surrounding intracluster medium/intergalactic medium. Placing constraints on the age of such sources is important in order to measure the jet powers and determine the effects on feedback. To evaluate the age of these sources using spectral age models, we require high-resolution multi-wavelength data. The new sensitive and high-resolution MIGHTEE survey of the XMM-LSS field along with data from the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) and the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) provide data taken at different frequencies with similar resolution, which enables us to determine the spectral age distribution for radio loud AGN in the survey field. In this study we present a sample of 28 radio galaxies with their best fitting spectral age distribution analyzed using the Jaffe-Perola (JP) model on a pixel-by-pixel basis. Fits are generally good and objects in our sample show maximum ages within the range of 2.8 Myr to 115 Myr with a median of 8.71 Myr. High-resolution maps over a range of frequencies are required to observe detailed age distributions for small sources and high-sensitivity maps will be needed in order to observe fainter extended emission. We do not observe any correlation between the total physical size of the sources and their age and we speculate both dynamical models and the approach to spectral age analysis may need some modification to account for our observations., Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures

In addition to the extended main-sequence turnoffs widely found in young and intermediate-age (~ 600 Myr-2 Gyr-old) star clusters, some younger clusters even exhibit split main sequences (MSs). Different stellar rotation rates are proposed to account for the bifurcated MS pattern, with red and blue MSs (rMS and bMS) populated by fast and slowly rotating stars, respectively. Using photometry from Gaia Early Data Release 3, we report a Galactic open cluster with a bifurcated MS, NGC 2422 ( ~ 90 Myr). We exclude the possibilities that the bifurcated MS pattern is caused by photometric noise or differential reddening. We aim to examine if stellar rotation can account for the split MSs. We use spectra observed with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and the Southern African Large Telescope, and directly measured v sin i, the projected rotational velocities, for stars populating the bMS and rMS. We find that their v sin i values are weakly correlated with their loci in the color-magnitude diagram because of contamination caused by a large fraction of rMS stars with low projected rotational velocities. Based on the spectral energy distribution fitting method, we suggest that these slowly rotating stars at the rMS may hide a binary companion, which breaks the expected v sin i-color correlation. Future time-domain studies focusing on whether these slowly rotating stars are radial velocity variables are crucial to test the roles of stellar rotation and binarity in generating the split MSs., Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures, 1 table; Accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal (ApJ)

We present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array observations of multiple CO(1-0), $^{13}$CO(1-0), and C$^{18}$O(1-0) lines and 2.9 mm and 1.3 mm continuum emission toward the nearby interacting luminous infrared galaxy NGC 3110, supplemented with similar spatial resolution H$\alpha$, 1.4GHz continuum, and $K$-band data. We estimate the typical CO-to-H$_2$ conversion factor of 1.7 $M_{\odot}$ (K km s$^{-1}$ pc$^2$)$^{-1}$ within the disk using LTE-based and dust-based H$_2$ column densities, and measure the 1-kpc scale surface densities of star formation rate ($\Sigma_{\rm SFR}$), super star clusters ($\Sigma_{\rm SSC}$), molecular gas mass, and star formation efficiency (SFE) toward the entire gas disk. These parameters show a peak at the southern part of the southern spiral arm (SFE $\sim$ 10$^{-8.2}$ yr$^{-1}$, $\Sigma_{\rm SFR}$ $\sim$ 10$^{-0.6}$ $M_{\odot}$ kpc$^{-2}$ yr$^{-1}$, $\Sigma_{\rm SSC}$ $\sim$ 6.0 kpc$^{-2}$), which is likely attributed to the on-going tidal interaction with the companion galaxy MCG-01-26-013, as well as toward the circumnuclear region. We also find that thermal free-free emission contributes to a significant fraction of the millimeter continuum emission at the southern peak position. Those measurements imply that the peak of the southern arm is an active and young star-forming region, whereas the central part of NGC 3110 is a site of long-continued star formation. We suggest that, during the early stage of the galaxy-galaxy interaction with large mass ratio that in NGC 3110, fragmentation along the main galaxy's arms is an important driver of merger-induced star formation and massive gas inflow results in dusty nuclear starbursts., Comment: 17 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal

Archival WFC3/UVIS imaging of Arp 299 (NGC 3690E + NGC 3690W) is retrieved to investigate the young massive cluster (YMC) population of this ongoing merger. We extract 2182 cluster candidates, including 1323 high confidence photometric sources. Multiband photometry is matched with Yggdrasil models to estimate the age, mass, and extinction of each cluster. A Schechter fit of the truncated cluster mass function results in a characteristic mass ${\rm M_{*} = 1.6 \times 10^6 M_{\odot}}$. Our results confirm that intensely star-forming galaxies such as Arp 299 host more massive clusters than quiescent dwarf and normal spirals. In the case of NGC 3690E, we find that the cluster masses decrease with an increasing galactocentric radius likely due to the gas density distribution. On the other hand, the fitted age distributions of a mass-limited sample suggest that YMCs of the western component undergo stronger disruption than those hosted by the eastern galaxy. This is in agreement with the properties of the underlying cluster luminosity functions: a clear truncation at high luminosities with slopes generally shallower by $\sim 0.3$ dex than the ones of the NGC 3690E. Finally, the derived cluster formation efficiency, $\Gamma \sim 19$ percent, indicates that Arp 299 has $\sim 3-5$ times more star formation happening in bound clusters compared to the cases of gas-poor spirals like NGC 2997 and NGC 4395. The merger generally follows the $\Gamma - $ star formation rate density relation from the literature. The YMC photometric study of Arp 299 thus reveals that both formation and disruption mechanisms of the star cluster population are most likely environment-dependent., Comment: 27 pages, Accepted for publication in MNRAS

Nuclear starbursts and AGN activity are the main heating processes in luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) and their relationship is fundamental to understand galaxy evolution. In this paper, we study the star-formation and AGN activity of a sample of 11 local LIRGs imaged with subarcsecond angular resolution at radio (8.4GHz) and near-infrared ($2.2\mu$m) wavelengths. This allows us to characterize the central kpc of these galaxies with a spatial resolution of $\simeq100$pc. In general, we find a good spatial correlation between the radio and the near-IR emission, although radio emission tends to be more concentrated in the nuclear regions. Additionally, we use an MCMC code to model their multi-wavelength spectral energy distribution (SED) using template libraries of starburst, AGN and spheroidal/cirrus models, determining the luminosity contribution of each component, and finding that all sources in our sample are starburst-dominated, except for NGC6926 with an AGN contribution of $\simeq64$\%. Our sources show high star formation rates ($40$ to $167M_\odot\mathrm{yr}^{-1}$), supernova rates (0.4 to $2.0\mathrm{SN}\mathrm{yr}^{-1}$), and similar starburst ages (13 to $29\mathrm{Myr}$), except for the young starburst (9Myr) in NGC6926. A comparison of our derived star-forming parameters with estimates obtained from different IR and radio tracers shows an overall consistency among the different star formation tracers. AGN tracers based on mid-IR, high-ionization line ratios also show an overall agreement with our SED model fit estimates for the AGN. Finally, we use our wide-band VLA observations to determine pixel-by-pixel radio spectral indices for all galaxies in our sample, finding a typical median value ($\alpha\simeq-0.8$) for synchrotron-powered LIRGs., Comment: Accepted for publication in MNRAS. 20 pages, 12 figures

An analysis of the star cluster population in a low-luminosity early type galaxy, NGC 2328, is presented. The clusters are found in a tight star-forming nuclear spiral/ring pattern and we also identify a bar from structural 2D decomposition. These massive clusters are forming very efficiently in the circum-nuclear environment, they are young, possibly all less than 30 Myr of age. The clusters indicate an azimuthal age gradient, consistent with a "pearls-on-a-string" formation scenario suggesting bar driven gas inflow. The cluster mass function has a robust down-turn at low masses at all age bins. Assuming clusters are born with a power-law distribution, this indicates extremely rapid disruption at time-scales of just several Myr. If found to be typical, it means that clusters born in dense circum-nuclear rings do not survive to become old globular clusters in non-interacting systems., Comment: Accepted to ApJ Letters. 5 pages using emulateapj

We have established a relation between the brightest super star cluster magnitude in a galaxy and the host star formation rate (SFR) for the first time in the near infrared (NIR). The data come from a statistical sample of ~ 40 luminous IR galaxies (LIRGs) and starbursts utilizing K-band adaptive optics imaging. While expanding the observed relation to longer wavelengths, less affected by extinction effects, it also pushes to higher SFRs. The relation we find, M_K ~ - 2.6 log SFR, is similar to that derived previously in the optical and at lower SFRs. It does not, however, fit the optical relation with a single optical to NIR color conversion, suggesting systematic extinction and/or age effects. While the relation is broadly consistent with a size-of-sample explanation, we argue physical reasons for the relation are likely as well. In particular, the scatter in the relation is smaller than expected from pure random sampling strongly suggesting physical constraints. We also derive a quantifiable relation tying together cluster-internal effects and host SFR properties to possibly explain the observed brightest SSC magnitude vs. SFR dependency., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ Letters

Super star clusters (SSCs) are typically found in interacting galaxies and trace an extreme form of star-formation. We present a K-band study of SSC candidates in a sample of local luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) using two adaptive optics instruments (VLT/NACO and Gemini/ALTAIR/NIRI). In addition to facilitating SSC detections in obscured environments, this work introduces SSC studies in hosts with higher star-formation rates (SFRs) than most previous studies. We find that the luminosity functions (LFs) of the clusters are reasonably well-fitted by a single power-law with the values of the index \alpha ranging between 1.5 to 2.4 with an average value of \alpha ~ 1.9. This value appears to be less steep than the average \alpha ~ 2.2 in normal spiral galaxies. Due to the host galaxy distances involved (median $D_L$ ~ 70 Mpc) blending effects have to be taken into account, and are investigated using Monte Carlo simulations of blending effects for LFs and a photometric SSC analysis of the well-studied Antennae system which is artificially redshifted to distances of our sample. While blending tends to flatten LFs our analyses show that \Delta \alpha is less than ~ 0.1 in our sample. The simulations also show that in the luminosity range, $M_K < -13$, considered in this work the extracted SSC luminosities are generally dominated by a single dominant star cluster rather than several knots of SF. We present resolution- and distance-dependent SSC surface density confusion limits and show how blending rates and aperture sizes affect the LFs. The smallest possible apertures should be used in crowded regions., Comment: 18 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS

We study star formation (SF) in very active environments, in luminous IR galaxies, which are often interacting. A variety of phenomena are detected, such as central starbursts, circumnuclear SF, obscured SNe tracing the history of recent SF, massive super star clusters, and sites of strong off-nuclear SF. All of these can be ultimately used to define the sequence of triggering and propagation of star-formation and interplay with nuclear activity in the lives of gas rich galaxy interactions and mergers. In this paper we present analysis of high-spatial resolution integral field spectroscopy of central regions of two interacting LIRGs. We detect a nuclear 3.3 um PAH ring around the core of NGC 1614 with thermal-IR IFU observations. The ring's characteristics and relation to the strong star-forming ring detected in recombination lines are presented, as well as a scenario of an outward expanding starburst likely initiated with a (minor) companion detected within a tidal feature. We then present NIR IFU observations of IRAS 19115-2124, aka the Bird, which is an intriguing triple encounter. The third component is a minor one, but, nevertheless, is the source of 3/4 of the SFR of the whole system. Gas inflows and outflows are detected at the locations of the nuclei. Finally, we briefly report on our on-going NIR adaptive optics imaging survey of several dozen LIRGs. We have detected highly obscured core-collapse SNe in the central kpc, and discuss the statistics of "missing SNe" due to dust extinction. We are also determining the characteristics of hundreds of super star clusters in and around the core regions of LIRGs, as a function of host-galaxy properties., Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures, to appear in "The Central Kiloparsec in Galactic Nuclei: Astronomy at High Angular Resolution 2011", open access Journal of Physics: Conference Series (JPCS), published by IOP Publishing

We report on an on-going near-IR adaptive optics survey targeting interacting luminous IR galaxies. High-spatial resolution NIR data are crucial to enable interpretation of kinematic, dynamical and star formation (SF) properties of these very dusty objects. Whole progenitor nuclei in the interactions can be missed if only optical HST imaging is used. Here we specifically present the latest results regarding core-collapse supernovae found within the highly extincted nuclear regions of these galaxies. Direct detection and study of such highly obscured CCSNe is crucial for revising the optically-derived SN rates used for providing an independent measurement of the SF history of the Universe. We also present thus-far the first NIR luminosity functions of super star cluster (SSC) candidates. The LFs can then be used to constrain the formation and evolution of SSCs via constraints based on initial mass functions and cluster disruption models., Comment: 6 pages. To appear in proceedings of 'Galaxies and their Masks' (Namibia, April 2010), published by Springer, New York, eds. D.L. Block, K.C. Freeman, I. Puerari