An analysis of Stellar Kinematics in a Sample of Quiescent Galaxies using the Galaxy IFU Spectroscopy Tool (GIST) and IFS data from the Atlas3D Project. Open Access

Abstract

In this project we extract the stellar kinematics for a sample of six quiescent galaxies within the Atlas3D sample for which there is photometric evidence of structure. The analysis is done by means of pPXF and the GIST pipeline. In an effort to understand the intrinsic scatter of σ⋆ in the M• −σ⋆ relation, we perform an analysis on the effect of effective radius. We provide evidence on the overestimation of the effective radius by Cappellari et al. (2011) where it can be 5x or 17x overestimated depending on the morphology of the galaxy bulge and find that the choice of effective radius can have a considerable effect on the relation, explaining some of the scatter in σ⋆. We also provide a preliminary batch processing code as a first step towards a large-scale analysis of the SAURON-observed galaxies.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

2 IFS, Tools, and Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2.1 IFU Spectroscopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

2.2 The SAURON Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

2.3 Voronoi Binning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2.4 pPXF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

2.5 Atlas3D and the Sample . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

3 GIST . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

3.1 The GIST Pipeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

3.2 Adaptation of GIST to SAURON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

3.2.1 readData Routine Modifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

3.2.2 MasterConfig Modifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

3.2.3 Spectral Masking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

3.3 Batch Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

3.4 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

4 Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

4.1 Effective Radii Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

4.2 Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Appendix A pPXF Best Fit Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Appendix B Analysis Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Appendix C MasterConfig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Physics and Astronomy
Degree	B.S.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Physics, Astrophysics
Keyword	Atlas3D Black Hole SAURON Voronoi Binning Stellar Kinematics IFU Spectroscopy pPXF Velocity Dispersion Effective Radius
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Merida Batiste, Emory University
Committee Members	Adam Tahir Mirza, Emory University Alissa Sue Bans, Emory University

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