Browsing by Author "Petric, Andreea O."

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    A Herschel Space Observatory Spectral Line Survey of Local Luminous Infrared Galaxies from 194 to 671 Microns
    (IOP PUBLISHING LTD, 2017) Lu, Nanyao; Zhao, Yinghe; Diaz Santos, Tanio; Kevin Xu, C.; Gao, Yu; Armus, Lee; Isaak, Kate G.; Mazzarella, Joseph M.; van der Werf, Paul P.; Appleton, Philip N.; Charmandaris, Vassilis; Evans, Aaron S.; Howell, Justin; Iwasawa, Kazushi; Leech, Jamie; Lord, Steven; Petric, Andreea O.; Privon, George C.; Sanders, David B.; Schulz, Bernhard; Surace, Jason A.
    We describe a Herschel Space Observatory 194-671 mu m spectroscopic survey of a sample of 121 local luminous infrared galaxies and report the fluxes of the CO J to J-1 rotational transitions for 4 <= J <= 13, the [N II] 205 mu m line, the [C I] lines at 609 and 370 mu m, as well as additional and usually fainter lines. The CO spectral line energy distributions (SLEDs) presented here are consistent with our earlier work, which was based on a smaller sample, that calls for two distinct molecular gas components in general: (i) a cold component, which emits CO lines primarily at J less than or similar to 4 and likely represents the same gas phase traced by CO (1-0), and (ii) a warm component, which dominates over the mid-J regime (4 < J less than or similar to 10) and is intimately related to current star formation. We present evidence that the CO line emission associated with an active galactic nucleus is significant only at J > 10. The flux ratios of the two [C I] lines imply modest excitation temperatures of 15-30 K; the [C I] 370 mu m line scales more linearly in flux with CO (4-3) than with CO (7-6). These findings suggest that the [C I] emission is predominantly associated with the gas component defined in (i) above. Our analysis of the stacked spectra in different far-infrared (FIR) color bins reveals an evolution of the SLED of the rotational transitions of H2O vapor as a function of the FIR color in a direction consistent with infrared photon pumping.
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    Characterizing the Molecular Gas in Infrared Bright Galaxies with CARMA
    (2024) Alatalo, Katherine; Petric, Andreea O.; Lanz, Lauranne; Rowlands, Kate; Vivian, U.; Larson, Kirsten L.; Armus, Lee; Barcos-Munoz, Loreto; Evans, Aaron S.; Koda, Jin; Luo, Yuanze; Medling, Anne M.; Nyland, Kristina E.; Otter, Justin A.; Patil, Pallavi; Penaloza, Fernando; Salim, Diane; Sanders, David B.; Sazonova, Elizaveta; Skarbinski, Maya; Song, Yiqing; Treister, Ezequiel; Urry, C. Meg
    We present the CO(1-0) maps of 28 infrared-bright galaxies from the Great Observatories All-Sky Luminous Infrared Galaxy Survey (GOALS) taken with the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter Astronomy (CARMA). We detect 100 GHz continuum in 16 of the 28 CARMA GOALS galaxies, which trace both active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and compact star-forming cores. The GOALS galaxies show a variety of molecular gas morphologies, though in the majority of cases the average velocity fields show a gradient consistent with rotation. We fit the full continuum spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of each of the sources using either magphys or SED3FIT (if there are signs of an AGN) to derive the total stellar mass, dust mass, and SFRs of each object. We adopt a value determined from luminous and ultraluminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs and ULIRGs) of alpha CO = 1.5-0.8+1.3 M circle dot (K km s-1 pc2)-1, which leads to more physical values for f mol and the gas-to-dust ratio. Mergers tend to have the highest gas-to-dust ratios. We assume the cospatiality of the molecular gas and star formation and plot the CARMA GOALS sample on the Schmidt-Kennicutt relation, where we find that they preferentially lie above the line set by normal star-forming galaxies. This hyper-efficiency is likely due to the increased turbulence in these systems, which decreases the freefall time compared to star-forming galaxies, leading to "enhanced" star formation efficiency. Line wings are present in a non-negligible subsample (11/28) of the CARMA GOALS sources and are likely due to outflows driven by AGNs or star formation, gas inflows, or additional decoupled gas components.
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    Warm Molecular Hydrogen in Nearby, Luminous Infrared Galaxies
    (2018) Petric, Andreea O.; Armus, Lee; Flagey, Nicolas; Guillard, Pierre; Howell, Justin; Inami, Hanae; Charmandaris, Vassillis; Evanss, Aaron; Stierwalt, Sabrina; Diaz-Santos, Tanio; Lu, Nanyao; Spoon, Henrik; Mazzarella, Joe; Appleton, Phil; Chan, Ben; Chu, Jason; Hand, Derek; Privon, George; Sanders, David; Surace, Jason; Xu, Kevin; Zhao, Yinghe
    Mid-infrared molecular hydrogen (H-2) emission is a powerful cooling agent in galaxy mergers and in radio galaxies; it is a potential key tracer of gas evolution and energy dissipation associated with mergers, star formation, and accretion onto supermassive black holes. We detect mid-IR H-2 line emission in at least one rotational transition in 91% of the 214 Luminous Infrared Galaxies (LIRGs) observed with Spitzer as part of the Great Observatories All-sky LIRG Survey. We use H-2 excitation diagrams to estimate the range of masses and temperatures of warm molecular gas in these galaxies. We find that LIRGs in which the IR emission originates mostly from the Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) have about 100 K higher H-2 mass-averaged excitation temperatures than LIRGs in which the IR emission originates mostly from star formation. Between 10% and 15% of LIRGs have H-2 emission lines that are sufficiently broad to be resolved or partially resolved by the high-resolution modules of Spitzer's Infrared Spectrograph (IRS). Those sources tend to be mergers and contain AGN. This suggests that a significant fraction of the H-2 line emission is powered by AGN activity through X-rays, cosmic rays, and turbulence. We find a statistically significant correlation between the kinetic energy in the H-2 gas and the H-2 to IR luminosity ratio. The sources with the largest warm gas kinetic energies are mergers. We speculate that mergers increase the production of bulk inflows leading to observable broad H-2 profiles and possibly denser gas.