2016/10/31 by Alexander Spacek, Evan Scannapieco, Seth H. Cohen +4
Physics and Astronomy · #Active galactic nucleus #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics #Cosmic microwave background #Disc #Elliptical galaxy #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Galaxy cluster #Galaxy formation and evolution #Galaxy group #Gamma-ray bursts and supernovae #Luminous infrared galaxy #Physics #Radio galaxy #Sigma #Sky #South Pole Telescope #astro-ph.GA
paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/1538-4357/834/2/102
published as 2017, ApJ 834 102 · 17 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ. Updated to reflect the final changes made for the published paper. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1601.01330
openalex created_date 2016/10/21 · arxiv created 2016/12/08 · openalex publication_date 2017/01/05 · arxiv updated 2017/11/03 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
ABSTRACT We directly measure the thermal energy of the gas surrounding galaxies through the thermal Sunyaev–Zel’dovich (tSZ) effect. We perform a stacking analysis of microwave background images from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, around 1179 massive quiescent elliptical galaxies at 0.5 ≤ z ≤ 1.0 (“low- z ”) and 3274 galaxies at 1.0 ≤ z ≤ 1.5 (“high- z ”), selected using data from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer All-Sky Survey and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) within the SDSS Stripe-82 field. The gas surrounding these galaxies is expected to contain energy from past episodes of active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback, and after using modeling to subtract undetected contaminants, we detect a tSZ signal at a significance of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mn>0.9</mml:mn> <mml:mi>σ</mml:mi> </mml:math> for our low- z galaxies and <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mn>1.8</mml:mn> <mml:mi>σ</mml:mi> </mml:math> for our high- z galaxies. We then include data from the high-frequency Planck bands for a subset of 227 low- z galaxies and 529 high- z galaxies and find low- z and high- z tSZ detections of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mn>1.0</mml:mn> <mml:mi>σ</mml:mi> </mml:math> and <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mn>1.5</mml:mn> <mml:mi>σ</mml:mi> </mml:math> , respectively. These results indicate an average thermal heating around these galaxies of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mo stretchy="true">(</mml:mo> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>5.6</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>5.6</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mn>5.9</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msubsup> <mml:mo stretchy="true">)</mml:mo> <mml:mo>×</mml:mo> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>10</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>60</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:math> erg for our low- z galaxies and <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mo stretchy="true">(</mml:mo> <mml:msubsup> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>7.0</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>4.4</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mn>4.7</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msubsup> <mml:mo stretchy="true">)</mml:mo> <mml:mo>×</mml:mo> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>10</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>60</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:math> erg for our high- z galaxies. Based on simple heating models, these results are consistent with gravitational heating without additional heating due to AGN feedback.