Kauffmann, G., Millán-Irigoyen, I., Crowther, P. et al. (1 more author) (2024) A resolved study of the inner regions of nearby galaxies with an excess of young massive stars: missing link in the AGN–starburst connection? Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 527 (1). pp. 150-170. ISSN 0035-8711
Abstract
We have selected galaxies with very high levels of H α emission (EQW(H α) >700 Å.) in their central regions from the final data release of the MaNGA survey. Our study focuses on 14 very well-resolved nearby galaxies with stellar masses in the range 9.5 < log M*/(M⊙) < 11.5. We investigate a variety of procedures for selecting galaxy regions that are likely to harbour excess populations of young massive stars, finding that selection in the 2D space of extinction-corrected H α EQW and [S III]/[S II] line ratio produces the best results. By comparing stacked spectra covering these regions with stacked spectra covering normal starburst regions with 100 Å<EQW(H α) <200 Å, we obtain the following main results: (1) Clear signatures of excess Wolf–Rayet stars are found in half of the H α excess regions, (2) galaxy regions containing excess Wolf–Rayet stars are more often associated with the presence of high-ionization emission lines characteristic of accreting black holes. Excess [Ne III] is detected in 4 out of 8 of the WR regions and there are tentative [Fe X] detections in 2 galaxies. (3) Regions of the galaxy with excess Wolf–Rayet stars are located where the interstellar medium has larger ionized gas turbulent velocities and higher neutral gas overdensities. We make a first attempt to constrain changes in the high-mass end of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) using the HR-pyPopStar evolutionary population synthesis models that include high-wavelength-resolution theoretical atmosphere libraries for Wolf–Rayet stars.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | galaxies: nuclei; galaxies: star formation; galaxies: stellar content; stars: Wolf–Rayet; galaxies: bulges; galaxies: active |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Physics and Astronomy (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 24 Jan 2024 16:22 |
Last Modified: | 24 Jan 2024 16:22 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Oxford University Press (OUP) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1093/mnras/stad3096 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:207605 |