Diffuse Gas in Retired Galaxies: Nebular Emission Templates and Constraints on the Sources of Ionization

Abstract

We present emission line templates for passively evolving ("retired") galaxies, useful for investigation of the evolution of the ISM in these galaxies, and characterization of their high-temperature source populations. The templates are based on high signal-to-noise ($>800$) co-added spectra ($3700-6800$Å) of $\sim 11500$ gas-rich Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies devoid of star-formation and active galactic nuclei. Stacked spectra are provided for the entire sample and sub-samples binned by mean stellar age. In Johansson~et al (2014), these spectra provided the first measurements of the He II 4686Å line in passively-evolving galaxies, and the observed He II/H$\beta$ ratio constrained the contribution of accreting white dwarfs (the "single-degenerate" scenario) to the type Ia supernova rate. In this paper, the full range of unambiguously detected emission lines are presented. Comparison of the observed [O I] 6300Å/H$\alpha$ ratio with photoionization models further constrains any high-temperature single-degenerate scenario for type Ia supernovae (with 1.5 $\lesssim$ T/$10^{5}K$ $\lesssim$ 10) to $\lesssim$3-6\% of the observed rate in the youngest age bin (i.e. highest SN Ia rate). Hence, for the same temperatures, in the presence of an ambient population of post-AGB stars, we exclude additional high-temperature sources with a combined ionizing luminosity of $\approx 1.35\times 10^{30}{L}_{\odot }/M_{\odot ,\ast }$ for stellar populations with mean ages of 1 - 4 Gyrs. Furthermore, we investigate the extinction affecting both the stellar and nebular continuum. The latter shows about five times higher values. This contradicts isotropically distributed dust and gas that renders similar extinction values for both cases.

arXiv commentAccepted for publication in MNRAS, 16 pages, 12 figures

References in corpus (38)

• Maps of Dust IR Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and CMBR Foregrounds
• Stellar population synthesis at the resolution of 2003
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Technical Summary
• The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The Galaxy Evolution Explorer: A Space Ultraviolet Survey Mission
• Stellar Masses and Star Formation Histories for 10^5 Galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Parametric Recovery of Line-of-Sight Velocity Distributions from Absorption-Line Spectra of Galaxies via Penalized Likelihood
• UV Star Formation Rates in the Local Universe
• MILES: A Medium resolution INT Library of Empirical Spectra
• The SAURON project - V. Integral-field emission-line kinematics of 48 elliptical and lenticular galaxies
• A comprehensive classification of galaxies in the SDSS: How to tell true from fake AGN?
• The SAURON project -- X. The orbital anisotropy of elliptical and lenticular galaxies: revisiting the (V/sigma,epsilon) diagram with integral-field stellar kinematics
• Reddening and Star Formation in Starburst Galaxies
• UV-optical colours as probes of early-type galaxy evolution
• Can retired galaxies mimic active galaxies? Clues from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The SAURON project XVI: On the Sources of Ionisation for the Gas in Elliptical and Lenticular Galaxies
• Type-Ia supernova rates and the progenitor problem, a review
• The nature of LINER galaxies: Ubiquitous hot old stars and rare accreting black holes
• Dusty, Radiation Pressure Dominated Photoionization. I. Model Description, Structure And Grids
• X-ray Binary Evolution Across Cosmic Time
• Flux-calibrated stellar population models of Lick absorption-line indices with variable element abundance ratios
• An upper limit on the contribution of accreting white dwarfs to the type Ia supernova rate
• Improved and Quality-assessed Emission and Absorption Line measurements in Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies
• Evolution of 3-9 Mo Stars for Z=0.001 - 0.03 and Metallicity Effects on Type Ia Supernovae
• Mapping dust through emission and absorption in nearby galaxies
• Nebular emission and the Lyman continuum photon escape fraction in CALIFA early-type galaxies
• Chemical element ratios of SDSS early-type galaxies
• Evolution of the Most Massive Galaxies to z=0.6: I. A New Method for Physical Parameter Estimation
• [O II] line ratios
• On the spectral resolution of the MILES stellar library
• The Stellar Populations in the Central Parsecs of Galactic Bulges Central Stellar Populations
• He II recombination lines as a test of the nature of SN Ia progenitors in elliptical galaxies
• On the nature of sodium excess objects. I. Data and observed trends
• Population synthesis of accreting white dwarfs: II. X-ray and UV emission
• Next generation population synthesis of accreting white dwarfs: I. Hybrid calculations using BSE + MESA
• Diffuse Gas in Galaxies Sheds New Light on the Origin of Type Ia Supernovae
• Precision Spectrophotometry at the Level of 0.1%
• Emission line diagnostics to constrain high temperature populations in early-type galaxies

Cited by in corpus (27)

• Sub-Chandrasekhar-mass white dwarf detonations revisited
• Mass-accreting white dwarfs and type Ia supernovae
• Role of core-collapse supernovae in explaining Solar System abundances of p nuclides
• Self-consistent predictions for LIER-like emission lines from post-AGB stars
• i-Process Contribution of Rapidly Accreting White Dwarfs to the Solar Composition of First-Peak Neutron-Capture Elements
• Comprehensive models of novae at metallicity $Z=0.02$ and $Z=10^{-4}$
• Surviving companions of Type Ia supernovae: theory and observations
• No hot and luminous progenitor for Tycho's supernova
• The MASSIVE Survey VI: The Spatial Distribution and Kinematics of Warm Ionized Gas in the Most Massive Local Early-type Galaxies
• An exquisitely deep view of quenching galaxies through the gravitational lens: Stellar population, morphology, and ionized gas
• The single-degenerate model for the progenitors of accretion-induced collapse events
• Why do many early-type galaxies lack emission lines? I. Fossil clues
• Balmer-Dominated Shocks Exclude Hot Progenitors for Many Type Ia Supernovae
• HI galaxies with little star formation: an abundance of LIERs
• Heavy Elements Nucleosynthesis On Accreting White Dwarfs: building seeds for the p-process
• The chemical evolution of the solar neighbourhood for planet-hosting stars
• Progenitor constraints on the Type Ia supernova SN 2014J from Hubble Space Telescope H$\beta$ and [O III] observations
• AGN photoionization of gas in companion galaxies as a probe of AGN radiation in time and direction
• Optical emission lines in the most massive galaxies: morphology, kinematics and ionisation properties
• X-ray Limits on the Progenitor System of the Type Ia Supernova 2017ejb
• SCUSS u-Band Emission as a Star-Formation-Rate Indicator
• Using chemical evolution models of the Milky Way disk to constrain Type Ia supernova progenitors
• The importance of the diffuse ionized gas for interpreting galaxy spectra
• Strontium-84 Enrichments in Presolar Grains Provide First Evidence of p-process Nucleosynthesis in Core-collapse Supernovae
• Spatially-resolved Galactic HII regions observed by LAMOST medium-Resolution Spectroscopic Survey of Nebulae (LAMOST MRS-N)
• Slow White Dwarf Mergers as a New Galactic Source of Trans-Iron Elements
• Trans-Fe elements from Type Ia Supernovae. I. Heavy element nucleosynthesis during the formation of near-Chandrasekhar white dwarfs