Browsing by Author "Prole, D. J."

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    Preparing for low surface brightness science with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory: Characterization of tidal features from mock images
    (2022) Martin, G.; Bazkiaei, A. E.; Spavone, M.; Iodice, E.; Mihos, J. C.; Montes, M.; Benavides, J. A.; Brough, S.; Carlin, J. L.; Collins, C. A.; Duc, P. A.; Gomez, F. A.; Galaz, G.; Hernandez-Toledo, H. M.; Jackson, R. A.; Kaviraj, S.; Knapen, J. H.; Martinez-Lombilla, C.; McGee, S.; O'Ryan, D.; Prole, D. J.; Rich, R. M.; Roman, J.; Shah, E. A.; Starkenburg, T. K.; Watkins, A. E.; Zaritsky, D.; Pichon, C.; Armus, L.; Bianconi, M.; Buitrago, F.; Busa, I; Davis, F.; Demarco, R.; Desmons, A.; Garcia, P.; Graham, A. W.; Holwerda, B.; Hon, D. S-H; Khalid, A.; Klehammer, J.; Klutse, D. Y.; Lazar, I; Nair, P.; Noakes-Kettel, E. A.; Rutkowski, M.; Saha, K.; Sahu, N.; Sola, E.; Vazquez-Mata, J. A.; Vera-Casanova, A.; Yoon, I
    Tidal features in the outskirts of galaxies yield unique information about their past interactions and are a key prediction of the hierarchical structure formation paradigm. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is poised to deliver deep observations for potentially millions of objects with visible tidal features, but the inference of galaxy interaction histories from such features is not straightforward. Utilizing automated techniques and human visual classification in conjunction with realistic mock images produced using the NewHorizon cosmological simulation, we investigate the nature, frequency, and visibility of tidal features and debris across a range of environments and stellar masses. In our simulated sample, around 80 per cent of the flux in the tidal features around Milky Way or greater mass galaxies is detected at the 10-yr depth of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (30-31 mag arcsec(-2)), falling to 60 per cent assuming a shallower final depth of 29.5 mag arcsec(-2). The fraction of total flux found in tidal features increases towards higher masses, rising to 10 per cent for the most massive objects in our sample (M-* similar to 10(11.5) M-circle dot). When observed at sufficient depth, such objects frequently exhibit many distinct tidal features with complex shapes. The interpretation and characterization of such features varies significantly with image depth and object orientation, introducing significant biases in their classification. Assuming the data reduction pipeline is properly optimized, we expect the Rubin Observatory to be capable of recovering much of the flux found in the outskirts of Milky Way mass galaxies, even at intermediate redshifts (z < 0.2).
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    Properties of intra-cluster low-mass X-ray binaries in Fornax globular clusters
    (2022) Riccio, G.; Paolillo, M.; Cantiello, M.; D'Abrusco, R.; Jin, X.; Li, Z.; Puzia, T.; Mieske, S.; Prole, D. J.; Iodice, E.; D'Ago, G.; Gatto, M.; Spavone, M.
    Aims. We present a study of the intra-cluster population of low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXB) residing in globular clusters (GC) in the central 1 deg(2) of the Fornax galaxy cluster. Differently from previous studies, which were restricted to the innermost regions of individual galaxies, this work is aimed at comparing the properties of the intra-cluster population of GC-LMXBs with those of the host galaxy. Methods. The data used in this work are a combination of the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) and Chandra observations. We performed a cross-match between the optical and the X-ray catalogue in order to identify the LMXBs residing in GCs. We divided the GC-LMXBs into host-galaxy and intra-cluster objects based on their distance from the nearest galaxy in terms of effective radius (R-eff). We found 82 intra-cluster GC-LMXBs and 86 objects that are hosted in galaxies. As the formation of LMXBs also depends on the host GC colour, we performed a Gaussian mixture model to divide the population into red and blue GCs. Results. As has been found for the innermost regions of galaxies, LMXBs tend to form in red and bright GCs in intra-cluster space as well. We find, however, that the likelihood of a red GC to host an LMXB decreases with galactocentric distance, but it remains approximately constant for the blue GC population. Investigating the X-ray properties of the LMXBs residing in GCs, we find a difference in the X-ray luminosity function between the intra-cluster and host-galaxy sample: both follow a power-law down to similar to 8.5 x 10(37) erg s(-1), which is consistent with field LMXBs for the intra-cluster sample, while the latter agree with previous estimates for LMXBs in GCs. We observe a deficiency of bright LMXBs in blue intra-cluster GCs, however. This might indicate a lack of black hole binaries in metal-poor systems. We further investigated the spectral properties of the GC-LMXBs through their hardness-ratio. We detect a tentative difference in the hardness ratio of two populations, where the intra-cluster GC-LMXBs appear to have harder spectra than the host-galaxy objects. We find the same trend when we compare red and blue GC-LMXBs: the spectra of the blue sample are harder spectra than those of the red sample. This result could suggest a relation between the spectral properties of LMXBs and the host GC colour and therefore its metallicity. We discuss the possibilities of spatial biases due to uncertainties in the X-ray spectral response correction and due to contamination by background active galactic nuclei.