Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) is an international journal which publishes papers on all aspects of astronomy and astrophysics

Aims. The goal of this work is to infer the star formation properties and the mass assembly process of high redshift () galaxies from their IR emission using the 24 μm band of MIPS-Spitzer.Methods. We used an updated version of the GOODS-MUSIC catalog, which has multiwavelength coverage from 0.3 to 24 μm and either spectroscopic or accurate photometric redshifts. We describe how the catalog has been extended by the addition of mid-IR fluxes derived from the MIPS 24 μm image. We compared two different estimators of the star formation rate (SFR hereafter). One is the total infrared emission derived from 24 μm, estimated using both synthetic and empirical IR templates. The other one is a multiwavelength fit to the full galaxy SED, which automatically accounts for dust reddening and age-star formation activity degeneracies. For both estimates, we computed the SFR density and the specific SFR.Results. We show that the two SFR indicators are roughly consistent, once the uncertainties involved are taken into account. However, they show a systematic trend, IR-based estimates exceeding the fit-based ones as the star formation rate increases. With this new catalog, we show that: a) at , the star formation rate is correlated well with stellar mass, and this relationship seems to steepen with redshift if one relies on IR-based estimates of the SFR; b) the contribution to the global SFRD by massive galaxies increases with redshift up to 2.5, more rapidly than for galaxies of lower mass, but appears to flatten at higher z; c) despite this increase, the most important contributors to the SFRD at any z are galaxies of about, or immediately lower than, the characteristic stellar mass; d) at , massive galaxies are actively star-forming, with a median yr-1. During this epoch, our targeted galaxies assemble a substantial part of their final stellar mass; e) the specific SFR (SSFR) shows a clear bimodal distribution.Conclusions. The analysis of the SFR density and the SSFR seems to support the downsizing scenario, according to which high mass galaxies have formed their stars earlier and more rapidly than their low mass counterparts. A comparison with renditions of theoretical simulations of galaxy formation and evolution indicates that these models follow the global increase in the SSFR with redshift and predict the existence of quiescent galaxies even at . However, the average SSFR is systematically underpredicted by all models considered.

Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) is an international journal which publishes papers on all aspects of astronomy and astrophysics

A neutrino with energy ∼290 TeV, IceCube-170922A, was detected in coincidence with the BL Lac object TXS 0506+056 during enhanced gamma-ray activity, with chance coincidence being rejected at ∼3 σ level. We monitored the object in the very-high-energy (VHE) band with the Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) telescopes for ∼41 hr from 1.3 to 40.4 days after the neutrino detection. Day-timescale variability is clearly resolved. We interpret the quasi-simultaneous neutrino and broadband electromagnetic observations with a novel one-zone lepto-hadronic model, based on interactions of electrons and protons co-accelerated in the jet with external photons originating from a slow-moving plasma sheath surrounding the faster jet spine. We can reproduce the multiwavelength spectra of TXS 0506+056 with neutrino rate and energy compatible with IceCube-170922A, and with plausible values for the jet power of . The steep spectrum observed by MAGIC is concordant with internal γγ absorption above ∼100 GeV entailed by photohadronic production of a ∼290 TeV neutrino, corroborating a genuine connection between the multi-messenger signals. In contrast to previous predictions of predominantly hadronic emission from neutrino sources, the gamma-rays can be mostly ascribed to inverse Compton upscattering of external photons by accelerated electrons. The X-ray and VHE bands provide crucial constraints on the emission from both accelerated electrons and protons. We infer that the maximum energy of protons in the jet comoving frame can be in the range ∼10 ¹⁴ – 10 ¹⁸ eV.

We report the spectroscopic confirmation of two Lyman break galaxies at redshift >7. The galaxies were observed as part of an ultra-deep spectroscopic campaign with FORS2 at the ESO/VLT for the confirmation of z 7 "z-band dropout" candidates selected from our VLT/Hawk-I imaging survey. Both galaxies show a prominent emission line at 9735 Å and 9858 Å, respectively: the lines have fluxes of ~(1.6-1.2) × 10^–17 erg s^–1 cm^–2 and exhibit a sharp decline on the blue side and a tail on the red side. The asymmetry is quantitatively comparable to the observed asymmetry in z ~ 6 Lyα lines, where absorption by neutral hydrogen in the intergalactic medium (IGM) truncates the blue side of the emission-line profile. We carefully evaluate the possibility that the galaxies are instead at lower redshift and we are observing either [O II], [O III], or Hα emission: however from the spectroscopic and the photometric data we conclude that there are no other plausible identifications, except for Lyα at redshift >7, implying that these are two of the most robust redshift determination for galaxies in the reionization epoch. Based on their redshifts and broadband photometry, we derive limits on the star formation rate and on the ultraviolet spectral slopes of the two galaxies. We argue that these two galaxies alone are unlikely to have ionized the IGM in their surroundings.

We used Early Release Science (ERS) observations taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in the GOODS-S field to study the galaxy stellar mass function (GSMF) at 0.6 ≤ z < 4.5. Deep WFC3 near-IR data (for Y as faint as 27.3, J and H as faint as 27.4 AB mag at 5σ), as well as deep K S (as faint as 25.5 at 5σ) Hawk-I band data, provide an exquisite data set with which determine in an unprecedented way the low-mass end of the GSMF, allowing an accurate probe of masses as low as M ∗ ≃ 7.6 × 109 M ⊙ at z ~ 3. Although the area used is relatively small (~33 arcmin2), we found generally good agreement with previous studies on the entire mass range. Our results show that the slope of the faint-end increases with redshift, from α = −1.44 ± 0.03 at z ~ 0.8 to α = −1.86 ± 0.16 at z ~ 3, although indications exist that it does not steepen further between z ~ 3 and z ~ 4. This result is insensitive to any uncertainty in the M ∗ parameter. The steepness of the GSMF faint-end solves the well-known disagreement between the stellar mass density (SMD) and the integrated star-formation history at z > 2. However, we confirm that there appears to be an excess of integrated star formation with respect to the SMD at z < 2, by a factor of ~2−3. Our comparison of the observations with theoretical predictions shows that the models forecast a greater abundance of low mass galaxies, at least up to z ~ 3, as well as a dearth of massive galaxies at z ~ 4 with respect to the data, and that the predicted SMD is generally overestimated at z ≲ 2.