Search arXivSearch

arXiv · 0807.2492

Properties and Chemical Evolution of the M31 Disk: Comparison with the Milky Way

Abstract

By adopting the chemical evolution model of the Milky Way disk, we have studied the star formation and chemical evolution history for M31 galaxy disk. We mainly concentrated on the global properties of the M31 disk. The model has been scaled to the related disk parameters, mainly the disk scale length and total disk baryon mass of M31, which we have adopted to be $r_d$=5.5kpc and $M_{tot} = 7\times 10^{10}$ \ms. It is found that, when the classical Kennicutt star formation law was applied, the obtained radial profiles of gas surface density and star formation rate (SFR) have great difference from the observed results in M31 disk. Then we have adopted modified SFR as we did for the Milky Way galaxy, that is the SFR is radial dependent. Detailed calculations show that by adjusting the star formation efficiency, it is possible to get reasonable gas and abundance profiles, but the total disk SFR is a factor of 2-3 higher than that estimated from observations. And also the predicted SFR radial profile is also much higher than what GALEX observed in the outer part. Possible reasons could be that the M31 disk has been interacted by other factors which seriously altered the star formation history, or the observed SFR is underestimated due to inappropriate extinction correction.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

BibTeXRIS

J. L. Hou, J. Yin, S. Boissier, N. Prantzos, R. X. Chang, L. Chen. 2008-07-16. Properties and Chemical Evolution of the M31 Disk: Comparison with the Milky Way. https://arxiv.org/abs/0807.2492

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

Interacting Phantom Energy and Avoidance of the Big Rip Singularity

Models of the universe with arbitrary (non gravitational) interaction between the components of the cosmic fluid: the phantom energy and the background, are investigated. A general form of the interaction that is inspired in scalar-tensor theories of gravity is considered. No specific model for the phantom fluid is assumed. We concentrate our investigation on solutions that are free of the coincidence problem. We found a wide region in the parameter space where the solutions are free of the big rip singularity also. Physical arguments, together with arguments based on the analysis of the observational evidence, suggest that phantom models without big rip singularity might be preferred by Nature.

astro-ph

Exploring the Small Magellanic Cloud to the Faintest X-ray Fluxes: Source Catalog, Timing and Spectral Analysis

We present the results of a pair of 100 ksec Chandra observations in the Small Magellanic Cloud to survey high mass X-ray binaries (HMXBs), stars and LMXBs/CVs down to Lx = 4.3 x 10^32 erg/s The two SMC Deep Fields are located in the most active star forming region of the bar, with Deep Field-1 positioned at the most pulsar-rich location identified from previous surveys. Two new pulsars were discovered in outburst: CXOU J004929.7-731058 (P=892s), CXOU J005252.2-721715 (P=326s), and 3 new HMXB candidates were identified. Of 15 Be-pulsars now known in the field, 13 were detected, with pulsations seen in 9 of them. Ephemerides demonstrate that 6 of the 10 pulsars known to exhibit regular outbursts were seen outside their periastron phase, and quiescent X-ray emission at Lx=10^33 - 10^34 is shown to be common. Comparison with ROSAT, ASCA, XMM-Newton catalogs resulted in positive identification of several previously ambiguous sources. Bright optical counterparts exist for 40 of the X-ray sources, of which 33 are consistent with early-type stars Mv<-2, B-V<0.2), and are the subject of a companion paper. The results point to an underlying HMXB population-density up to double that of active systems. The full catalog of 394 point-sources is presented along with detailed analyses of timing and spectral properties.

astro-ph

A Computer Program to Visualize Gravitational Lenses

Gravitational lenses are presently playing an important role in astrophysics. By means of these lenses the parameters of the deflector such as its mass, ellipticity, etc. and Hubble's constant can be determined. Using C, Xforms, Mesa and Imlib a computer program to visualize this lens effect has been developed. This program has been applied to generate sequences of images of a source object and its corresponding images. It has also been used to visually test different models of gravitational lenses.

astro-ph