English

Separating Line Emission from Star Formation, Shocks, and AGN Ionisation in NGC 1068

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2019-06-20 v1

Abstract

In the optical spectra of galaxies, the separation of line emission from gas ionised by star formation and an AGN, or by star formation and shocks, are very well-understood problems. However, separating line emission between AGN and shocks has proven difficult. With the aid of a new three-dimensional diagnostic diagram, we show the simultaneous separation of line emission from star formation, shocks, and AGN in NGC 1068, and quantify the ratio of star formation, shocks, and AGN in each spaxel. The AGN, shock, and star formation luminosity distributions across the galaxy accurately align with X-ray, radio, and CO(3-2) observations, respectively. Comparisons with previous separation methods show that the shocked emission heavily mixes with the AGN emission. We also show that if the Hα\alpha flux is to be used as a star formation rate indicator, separating line emission from as many sources as possible should be attempted to ensure accurate results.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1906.07907,
  title  = {Separating Line Emission from Star Formation, Shocks, and AGN Ionisation in NGC 1068},
  author = {Joshua J. D'Agostino and Lisa J. Kewley and Brent A. Groves and Anne M. Medling and Enrico Di Teodoro and Michael A. Dopita and Adam D. Thomas and Ralph S. Sutherland and Santiago Garcia-Burillo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1906.07907},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

17 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS