Cheung, Edmond and Stark, David V. and Huang, Song and Rubin, Kate H. R. and Lin, Lihwai and Tremonti, Christy and Zhang, Kai and Yan, Renbin and Bizyaev, Dmitry and Boquien, Mederic and Brownstein, Joel R. and Drory, Niv and Gelfand, Joseph D. and Knapen, Johan H. and Maiolino, Roberto and Malanushenko, Olena and Masters, Karen L. and Merrifield, Michael R. and Pace, Zach and Pan, Kaike and Riffel, Rogemar A. and Roman-Lopes, Alexandre and Rujopakarn, Wiphu and Schneider, Donald P. and Stott, John P. and Thomas, Daniel and Weijmans, Anne-Marie (2016) SDSS-IV MaNGA : a serendipitous observation of a potential gas accretion event. The Astrophysical Journal, 832 (2): 182. ISSN 0004-637X
1609.02155v2.pdf - Accepted Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial.
Download (2MB)
Abstract
The nature of warm, ionized gas outside of galaxies may illuminate several key galaxy evolutionary processes. A serendipitous observation by the MaNGA survey has revealed a large, asymmetric H alpha complex with no optical counterpart that extends approximate to 8 '' (approximate to 6.3 kpc) beyond the effective radius of a dusty, starbursting galaxy. This H alpha extension is approximately three times the effective radius of the host galaxy and displays a tail-like morphology. We analyze its gas- phase metallicities, gaseous kinematics, and emission- line ratios and discuss whether this Ha extension could be diffuse ionized gas, a gas accretion event, or something else. We find that this warm, ionized gas structure is most consistent with gas accretion through recycled wind material, which could be an important process that regulates the low- mass end of the galaxy stellar mass function.