English

MaNGA 8313-1901: gas accretion observed in a blue compact dwarf galaxy?

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2022-10-26 v1

Abstract

Gas accretion is an important process in the evolution of galaxies, but it has limited direct observational evidences. In this paper, we report the detection of a possible ongoing gas accretion event in a Blue Compact Dwarf (BCD) galaxy, MaNGA 8313-1901, observed by the Mapping Nearby Galaxies and Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) program. This galaxy has a distinct off-centered blue clump to the northeast (the NE clump) that shows low metallicity and enhanced star-formation. The kinematics of the gas in the NE clump also seems to be detached from the host BCD galaxy. Together with the metallicity drop of the NE clump, it suggests that the NE clump likely has an external origin, such as the gas accretion or galaxy interaction, rather than an internal origin, such as an \hii~complex in the disk. After removing the underlying host component, we find that the spectrum of the "pure" clump can match very well with a modeled spectrum containing a stellar population of the young stars (7\le 7 Myr) only. This may imply that the galaxy is experiencing an accretion of cold gas, instead of a merger event involving galaxies with significant pre-existing old stars. We also find signs of another clump (the SW clump) at the south-west corner of the host galaxy, and the two clumps may share the same origin of gas accretion.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2209.03298,
  title  = {MaNGA 8313-1901: gas accretion observed in a blue compact dwarf galaxy?},
  author = {Mengting Ju and Jun Yin and Rongrong Liu and Lei Hao and Zhengyi Shao and Shuai Feng and Rogério Riffel and Chenxu Liu and David V. Stark and Shiyin Shen and Eduardo Telles and José G. Fernández-Trincado and Junfeng Wang and Haiguang Xu and Dmitry Bizyaev and Yu Rong},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.03298},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

17 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in ApJ