Investigating Galaxy Evolution and Active Galactic Nucleus Feedback with the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect
abstract: Galaxy formation is a complex process with aspects that are still very uncertain or unknown. A mechanism that has been utilized in simulations to successfully resolve several of these outstanding issues is active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback. Recent work has shown that a promising metho...
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ftarizonastateun:item:45503 2023-05-15T18:23:24+02:00 Investigating Galaxy Evolution and Active Galactic Nucleus Feedback with the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect Spacek, Alexander Edward (Author) Scannapieco, Evan (Advisor) Bowman, Judd (Committee member) Butler, Nat (Committee member) Groppi, Chris (Committee member) Young, Patrick (Committee member) Arizona State University (Publisher) 2017 172 pages http://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.45503 eng eng http://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.45503 http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ All Rights Reserved Astrophysics active galactic nucleus cosmic microwave background feedback galaxies galaxy evolution sunyaev-zel'dovich Doctoral Dissertation 2017 ftarizonastateun 2018-06-23T23:00:19Z abstract: Galaxy formation is a complex process with aspects that are still very uncertain or unknown. A mechanism that has been utilized in simulations to successfully resolve several of these outstanding issues is active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback. Recent work has shown that a promising method for directly measuring this energy is by looking at small increases in the energy of cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons as they pass through ionized gas, known as the thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (tSZ) effect. In this work, I present stacked CMB measurements of a large number of elliptical galaxies never before measured using this method. I split the galaxies into two redshift groups, "low-z" for z=0.5-1.0 and “high-z” for z=1.0-1.5. I make two independent sets of CMB measurements using data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), respectively, and I use data from the Planck telescope to account for contamination from dust emission. With SPT I find average thermal energies of 7.6(+3.0/−2.3) × 10^60 erg for 937 low-z galaxies, and 6.0(+7.7/−6.3) × 10^60 erg for 240 high-z galaxies. With ACT I find average thermal energies of 5.6(+5.9/−5.6) × 10^60 erg for 227 low-z galaxies, and 7.0(+4.7/−4.4) × 10^60 erg for 529 high-z galaxies. I then attempt to further interpret the physical meaning of my observational results by incorporating two large-scale cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, one with (Horizon-AGN) and one without (Horizon-NoAGN) AGN feedback. I extract simulated tSZ measurements around a population of galaxies equivalent to those used in my observational work, with matching mass distributions, and compare the results. I find that the SPT measurements are consistent with Horizon-AGN, falling within 0.4σ at low-z and 0.5σ at high-z, while the ACT measurements are very different from Horizon-AGN, off by 6.9σ at low-z and 14.6σ at high-z. Additionally, the SPT measurements are loosely inconsistent with Horizon-NoAGN, off by 1.8σ at low-z but within 0.6σ at high-z, while the ACT measurements are loosely consistent with Horizon-NoAGN (at least much more so than with Horizon-AGN), falling within 0.8σ at low-z but off by 1.9σ at high-z. Dissertation/Thesis Doctoral Dissertation Astrophysics 2017 Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis South pole Arizona State University: ASU Digital Repository South Pole |
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Arizona State University: ASU Digital Repository |
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ftarizonastateun |
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English |
topic |
Astrophysics active galactic nucleus cosmic microwave background feedback galaxies galaxy evolution sunyaev-zel'dovich |
spellingShingle |
Astrophysics active galactic nucleus cosmic microwave background feedback galaxies galaxy evolution sunyaev-zel'dovich Investigating Galaxy Evolution and Active Galactic Nucleus Feedback with the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect |
topic_facet |
Astrophysics active galactic nucleus cosmic microwave background feedback galaxies galaxy evolution sunyaev-zel'dovich |
description |
abstract: Galaxy formation is a complex process with aspects that are still very uncertain or unknown. A mechanism that has been utilized in simulations to successfully resolve several of these outstanding issues is active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback. Recent work has shown that a promising method for directly measuring this energy is by looking at small increases in the energy of cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons as they pass through ionized gas, known as the thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (tSZ) effect. In this work, I present stacked CMB measurements of a large number of elliptical galaxies never before measured using this method. I split the galaxies into two redshift groups, "low-z" for z=0.5-1.0 and “high-z” for z=1.0-1.5. I make two independent sets of CMB measurements using data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), respectively, and I use data from the Planck telescope to account for contamination from dust emission. With SPT I find average thermal energies of 7.6(+3.0/−2.3) × 10^60 erg for 937 low-z galaxies, and 6.0(+7.7/−6.3) × 10^60 erg for 240 high-z galaxies. With ACT I find average thermal energies of 5.6(+5.9/−5.6) × 10^60 erg for 227 low-z galaxies, and 7.0(+4.7/−4.4) × 10^60 erg for 529 high-z galaxies. I then attempt to further interpret the physical meaning of my observational results by incorporating two large-scale cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, one with (Horizon-AGN) and one without (Horizon-NoAGN) AGN feedback. I extract simulated tSZ measurements around a population of galaxies equivalent to those used in my observational work, with matching mass distributions, and compare the results. I find that the SPT measurements are consistent with Horizon-AGN, falling within 0.4σ at low-z and 0.5σ at high-z, while the ACT measurements are very different from Horizon-AGN, off by 6.9σ at low-z and 14.6σ at high-z. Additionally, the SPT measurements are loosely inconsistent with Horizon-NoAGN, off by 1.8σ at low-z but within 0.6σ at high-z, while the ACT measurements are loosely consistent with Horizon-NoAGN (at least much more so than with Horizon-AGN), falling within 0.8σ at low-z but off by 1.9σ at high-z. Dissertation/Thesis Doctoral Dissertation Astrophysics 2017 |
author2 |
Spacek, Alexander Edward (Author) Scannapieco, Evan (Advisor) Bowman, Judd (Committee member) Butler, Nat (Committee member) Groppi, Chris (Committee member) Young, Patrick (Committee member) Arizona State University (Publisher) |
format |
Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis |
title |
Investigating Galaxy Evolution and Active Galactic Nucleus Feedback with the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect |
title_short |
Investigating Galaxy Evolution and Active Galactic Nucleus Feedback with the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect |
title_full |
Investigating Galaxy Evolution and Active Galactic Nucleus Feedback with the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect |
title_fullStr |
Investigating Galaxy Evolution and Active Galactic Nucleus Feedback with the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect |
title_full_unstemmed |
Investigating Galaxy Evolution and Active Galactic Nucleus Feedback with the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect |
title_sort |
investigating galaxy evolution and active galactic nucleus feedback with the sunyaev-zel'dovich effect |
publishDate |
2017 |
url |
http://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.45503 |
geographic |
South Pole |
geographic_facet |
South Pole |
genre |
South pole |
genre_facet |
South pole |
op_relation |
http://hdl.handle.net/2286/R.I.45503 |
op_rights |
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ All Rights Reserved |
_version_ |
1766202982072844288 |