The Intergalactic Medium (IGM) is the region comprising the environment between the galaxies. Gamma-ray observations have provided lower limits to IGM magnetic fields of the order of ≳10–16 G. Magnetic fields are continuously ejected from galaxies by jets and galactic winds. However, the origin and evolution of cosmic magnetic fields in the more diffuse regions, like voids, is still debated. The difficulties in directly measuring magnetic fields and their coherent scales, make hydrodynamic and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) cosmological simulations useful tools to shed light on this debate. As a first approach, we have performed hydrodynamic cosmological simulations assuming energy equipartition as an initial condition between the baryonic gas and the magnetic field, starting at z = 8, to track the evolution of magnetic fields, and compare with results of MHD simulations. We have found that for halos and cores, our results are comparable to the MHD description. For the less dense regions, the equipartition condition clearly overestimates the observed limits. In forthcoming work, we will investigate MHD simulations of cosmological evolution and amplification of seed magnetic fields, considering all relevant feedback processes and exploring turbulent dynamo amplification versus primordial mechanisms across cosmological timescales.

With the exception of some nearby galaxies, we cannot resolve stars individually. To recover the galaxies star formation history (SFH), the challenge is to extract information from their integrated spectrum. A widely used tool is the full spectral fitting technique. This consists of combining simple stellar populations (SSPs) of different ages and metallicities to match the integrated spectrum. This technique works well for optical spectra, for metallicities near solar and chemical histories not much different from our Galaxy. For everything else there is room for improvement. With telescopes being able to explore further and further away, and beyond the optical, the improvement of this type of tool is crucial. SSPs use as ingredients isochrones, an initial mass function, and a library of stellar spectra. My focus are the stellar libraries, key ingredient for SSPs. Here I talk about the latest developments of stellar libraries, how they influence the SSPs and how to improve them.

Understanding the interplay between the phenomena of active galactic nuclei (AGN) and starbursts remains an open issue in studies of galaxy evolution. The galaxy NGC 34 is the remnant of the merger of two former gas-rich disc galaxies and it also hosts a strong nuclear starburst. In this work, we map the ionized and molecular gas present in the nuclear regions of the galaxy NGC 34 using adaptive optics (AO) assisted near infrared (NIR) integral field unity (IFU) observations. Our main goals are to better constrain the energy source of this object and to use NGC 34 as a laboratory to probe the AGN-starburst connection in the context of galaxy evolution and AGN feeding and feedback processes.

We serendipitously found an intriguing Extended Emission Line Region (EELR) near the quiescent and massive early-type Mrk 1172, with a projected extension of approximately 14 × 14 kpc. Its irregular shape, high gas content, strong emission lines and proximity to an isolated possible faded quasar raise questions about the ionization of this gas and the nature of this object. Analyzing the stellar population in both objects we observe that the EELR has a dominance of young-intermediate and intermediate stellar populations (200 Myr < t < 1 Gyr) with significant star formation activity, while Mrk 1172 is dominated by old stellar population (t > 5 Gyr). BPT diagnostic diagrams indicate that the gas in the EELR is photoionized by hot massive stars rather than by a hard radiation field or by shocks. Further analysis on abundances of the gas and its kinematics shall be performed to better comprehend the nature of this object and how it is interacting with Mrk 1172.

We present the results of a 69 arcmin2 ALMA survey at 1.1 mm, GOODS-ALMA, matching the deepest HST-WFC3 H-band observed region of the GOODS-South field. The 35 galaxies detected by ALMA are among the most massive galaxies at z = 2–4 and are either starburst or located in the upper part of the galaxy star-forming main sequence. The analysis of the gas fraction, depletion time, X-ray luminosity and the size suggests that they are building compact bulges and are the ideal progenitors of compact passive galaxies at z˜2, and a slow downfall scenario is favoured in their future transition from star-forming to passive galaxies.

The evolution of galaxies at Cosmic Noon (1 < z < 3) passed through a dust-obscured phase, during which most stars formed and black holes in galactic nuclei started to shine, which cannot be seen in the optical and UV, but it needs rest frame mid-to-far IR spectroscopy to be unveiled. At these frequencies, dust extinction is minimal and a variety of atomic and molecular transitions, tracing most astrophysical domains, occur. The Space Infrared telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics (SPICA), currently under evaluation for the 5th Medium Size ESA Cosmic Vision Mission, fully redesigned with its 2.5-m mirror cooled down to T < 8K will perform such observations. SPICA will provide for the first time a 3-dimensional spectroscopic view of the hidden side of star formation and black hole accretion in all environments, from voids to cluster cores over 90% of cosmic time. Here we outline what SPICA will do in galaxy evolution studies.

Using the recent ROGUE I catalogue of galaxies with radio cores (Kozie_l-Wierzbowska et al. 2020) and after selecting the objects which are truly radio active galactic nuclei, AGNs, (which more than doubles the samples available so far), we perform a thorough comparison of the properties of radio galaxies with and without optical emission lines (galaxies where the equivalent width of Hα is smaller than 3Å are placed in the last category). We do not find any strong dichotomy between the two classes as regards the radio luminosities or black hole masses. The same is true when using the common classification into high- and low-excitation radio galaxies (HERGs and LERGs respectively).

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) play[-105pt]Kindly check and confirm the Article Title. fundamental roles in the evolution of galaxies, groups, and clusters. The fossil record of supermassive black hole outbursts is seen through the cavities and shocks that are imprinted on these gas-rich systems. For M87, the central galaxy in the Virgo cluster, deep Chandra observations illustrate the physics of AGN feedback in hot, gas-rich atmospheres and allow measurements of the age, duration, and power of the outburst from the supermassive black hole in M87 that produced the observed cavities and shocks in the hot X-ray atmosphere.

Dark matter bars are structures that may form inside dark matter haloes of barred galaxies. Haloes can depart from sphericity and also be subject to some spin. The latter is known to have profound impacts on the evolution of both stellar and DM bars, such as stronger dynamical instabilities, more violent vertical bucklings and dissolution or impairment of stellar bar growth. On the other hand, dark matter bars of spherical haloes become initially stronger in the presence of spin. In this study, we add spin to triaxial halos in order to quantify and compare the strength of their bars. Using N-body simulations, we find that spin accelerates main instabilities and strengthens the halo bars, although their final strength depends only on triaxiality. The most triaxial halo barely forms a halo bar, showing that flattening opposes to DM bar strengthening and indicating that there is a limit on how flattened the parent structure can be.

We perform simultaneous multi-band fitting, using the routine GALFITM, of the galaxy NGC3115, in order to recover the stellar populations of its main components (a bulge, a thin disc and a thick disc). We model 11 bands, from ultraviolet to infrared, in order to take into account the galaxy younger stellar population and the presence of the Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). We find that the majority of the galaxy baryonic mass belongs to the thick disc, which is also the oldest galaxy component, consistent with results from the literature. Differently from previous works, we find that the bulge has the bluest colour and it is younger than the thick disc, either as a result of recent star formation activity, or AGN feedback, or white dwarf emission in an old stellar population. Finally, we propose that NGC3115 was formed either through a two-phase formation scenario, or via an outside-in quenching of an isolated spiral galaxy, whose thick disc had been heated-up via minor mergers with dwarf satellites.

The coexistence of star formation and AGN activity has geared much attention to dusty galaxies at high redshifts, in the interest of understanding the origin of the Magorrian relation observed locally, where the mass of the stellar bulk in a galaxy appears to be tied to the mass of the underlying supermassive black hole. We exploit the combined use of far-infrared (IR) Herschel data and deep Chandra ˜160 ksec depth X-ray imaging of the COSMOS field to probe for AGN signatures in a large sample of >100 Dust-Obscured Galaxies (DOGs). Only a handful (˜20%) present individual X-ray detections pointing to the presence of significant AGN activity, while X-ray stacking analysis on the X-ray undetected DOGs points to a mix between AGN activity and star formation. Together, they are typically found on the main sequence of star-forming galaxies or below it, suggesting that they are either still undergoing significant build up of the stellar bulk or have started quenching. We find only ˜30% (6) Compton-thick AGN candidates (NH > 1024 cm–2), which is the same frequency found within other soft- and hard-X-ray selected AGN populations. This suggests that the large column densities responsible for the obscuration in Compton-thick AGNs must be nuclear and have little to do with the dust obscuration of the host galaxy. We find that DOGs identified to have an AGN share similar near-IR and mid-to-far-IR colors, independently of whether they are individually detected or not in the X-ray. The main difference between the X-ray detected and the X-ray undetected populations appears to be in their redshift distributions, with the X-ray undetected ones being typically found at larger distances. This strongly underlines the critical need for multiwavelength studies in order to obtain a more complete census of the obscured AGN population out to higher redshifts. For more details, we refer the reader to Riguccini et al. (2019).

We investigated how the most common dusty torus models reproduce both the 10 and 18μm silicate emission features observed in the nuclear infrared (IR) Spitzer spectrum of type 1 active galactic nuclei (AGN). We use a sample of type 1 AGN for which the Spitzer spectrum is mostly dominated by the emission of the AGN (>80%), and the 10μm silicate emission feature is prominent (1σSi10μm > 0.28). The models are the smooth dusty torus models from Fritz et al., the clumpy dusty torus models from Nenkova et al. and Hoenig et al., the two-phase media torus model from Stalevski et al., and the disk+outflow model from Hoenig et al. These models differ by assuming either different geometry or dust composition. We found that in general, all models have difficulties reproducing the shape and peak of the silicate emission features, but the disk+outflow model is the best reproducing the AGN-dominated Spitzer spectrum.

The Commensal Real-time Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder Fast Transients survey is the first extensive astronomical survey using phased array feeds. Since January 2017, it has been searching for fast radio bursts in fly’s eye mode. Here, we present a calculation of the sensitivity and total exposure of the survey that detected the first 20 of these bursts, using the pulsars B1641-45 and B0833-45 as calibrators. The beamshape, antenna-dependent system noise, and the effects of radio-frequency interference and fluctuations during commissioning are quantified. Effective survey exposures and sensitivities are calculated as a function of the source counts distribution. Statistical ‘stat’ and systematics ‘sys’ effects are treated separately. The implied fast radio burst rate is significantly lower than the 37 sky−1 day−1 calculated using nominal exposures and sensitivities for this same sample by Shannon et al. (2018). At the Euclidean (best-fit) power-law index of −1.5 (−2.2), the rate is $12.7_{-2.2}^{+3.3}$ (sys) ± 3.6 (stat) sky−1 day−1 ( $20.7_{-1.7}^{+2.1}$ (sys) ± 2.8 (stat) sky−1 day−1) above a threshold of 56.6 ± 6.6(sys) Jy ms (40.4 ± 1.2(sys) Jy ms). This strongly suggests that these calculations be performed for other FRB-hunting experiments, allowing meaningful comparisons to be made between them.

This paper describes the technical details and practical implementation of the phase synchronisation system selected for use by the Mid-Frequency Square Kilometre Array. Over a four-year period, the system has been tested on metropolitan fibre-optic networks, on long-haul overhead fibre at the South African Square Kilometre Array site, and on existing telescopes in Australia to verify its functional performance. The tests have shown that the system exceeds the 1-s Square Kilometre Array coherence loss requirement by a factor of 2 560, the 60-s coherence loss requirement by a factor of 239, and the 10-min phase drift requirement by almost five orders-of-magnitude. The paper also reports on tests showing that the system can operate within specification over all the required operating conditions, including maximum fibre link distance, temperature range, temperature gradient, relative humidity, wind speed, seismic resilience, electromagnetic compliance, frequency offset, and other operational requirements.

This paper uses population synthesis to investigate the possible origin of isolated millisecond pulsars as born from the coalescence of a neutron star and a white dwarf. Results show that the galactic birth rate of isolated millisecond pulsars is likely to lie between 5.8×10−5 yr−1 and 2.0×10−4 yr−1, depending on critical variables, such as the stability of mass transfer via the Roche lobe and the value of kick velocity. In addition to this, this paper estimates that the solar mass of isolated millisecond pulsars can range from 1.5 and 2.0 Mʘ, making them more massive than other ‘normal’ pulsars. Finally, the majority of isolated millisecond pulsars in our simulations have spin periods ranging from several to 20 ms, which is consistent with previous observations.

Stars of 8–10 M⊙ form a strongly electron-degenerate oxygen–neon–magnesium core which is more massive than ∼1.1 M⊙, and become super-Asymptotic Giant Branch stars. The oxygen–neon–magnesium core increases its mass through H and He shell burning. The core contracts accordingly and the central density increases. In the high density core, electron capture takes place and further boosts the core contraction. When electron capture on 20Ne starts, it induces oxygen–neon deflagration. It remains a theoretical question whether neutron star can be formed after the deflagration has started. If the star collapses, the following explosion is known as an electron capture supernova. In this article, we give a brief overview on the development of idea in the presupernova evolution and the hydrodynamics behaviour of electron capture supernovae. Using standard stellar evolutionary models that show rather high ignition density, we show that the collapse can occur in a wide range of model parameter. However, future study remains important. We also review the possible observables of electron capture supernovae and discuss their applications to the light curve model for the Crab supernova 1054.

The GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky Murchison Widefield Array survey is a radio continuum survey at 72–231 MHz of the whole sky south of declination +30º, carried out with the Murchison Widefield Array. In this paper, we derive source counts from the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky Murchison data at 200, 154, 118, and 88 MHz, to a flux density limit of 50, 80, 120, and 290 mJy respectively, correcting for ionospheric smearing, incompleteness and source blending. These counts are more accurate than other counts in the literature at similar frequencies as a result of the large area of sky covered and this survey’s sensitivity to extended emission missed by other surveys. At S154 MHz > 0.5 Jy, there is no evidence of flattening in the average spectral index (α ≈ −0.8 where S ∝ vα) towards the lower frequencies. We demonstrate that the Square Kilometre Array Design Study model by Wilman et al. significantly underpredicts the observed 154-MHz GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky Murchison counts, particularly at the bright end. Using deeper Low-Frequency Array counts and the Square Kilometre Array Design Study model, we find that sidelobe confusion dominates the thermal noise and classical confusion at v ≳ 100 MHz due to both the limited CLEANing depth and the undeconvolved sources outside the field-of-view. We show that we can approach the theoretical noise limit using a more efficient and automated CLEAN algorithm.