Résumé / Abstract Journal-club_Galaxies

Séminaire/Seminar Galaxies

« Star-forming galaxies as seen through emission lines »

Maryam Shirazi
Sterrewacht Leiden (Leiden, Pays-Bas)

In my talk, I first present star-forming (SF) galaxies in the SDSS that show nebular He II 4686 emission. I use this He II emitters to investigate the origin of this high ionization line in SF galaxies where the ionizing continua come from massive stars. I show that He II 4686 is not associated with Wolf-Rayet (WR) stars in most of He II emitters at low metallicities while current models for massive stars predict that WR stars are the main sources of ionization. I discuss possible explanations for this discrepancy.
In the second part of my talk, I compare the physical properties of SF galaxies in the local and high-redshift (high-z) Universe. To do this, I use local analogs of 14 high-z galaxies in the SDSS. These analogs have comparable specific star formation (sSFR) rates or EW(Ha) and masses to that of high-z SF galaxies. I show the ionization parameters for these high-z galaxies are higher than that of their low-z analogs. This implies that high-z SF galaxies have higher electron densities than low-z analogs. From this, I conclude that star formation takes place in denser HII regions at high-z.
jeudi 7 février 2013 - 11:30
Salle 281
Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris
Page web du séminaire / Seminar's webpage