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A Herschel Survey of the [N ii] 205 μm Emission in Local Infrared Luminous Galaxies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2013

Yinghe Zhao*
Affiliation:
Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academic of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China Infrared Analysis and Processing Center, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
Nanyao Lu
Affiliation:
Infrared Analysis and Processing Center, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
C. Kevin Xu
Affiliation:
Infrared Analysis and Processing Center, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA
Yu Gao
Affiliation:
Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academic of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China
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Abstract

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The [N ii] line is a major coolant in ionized interstellar medium, and is expected to be a good star formation rate indicator. Here we present a statistical study of [N ii] line emission for a large sample of local luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) using Herschel SPIRE FTS data (Lu et al. 2012; Zhao et al. 2012, in preparation). For our sample of galaxies, the [N ii] to the total infrared luminosity ratio (L[Nii]/LIR) varies from ∼ 10−5 to ∼ 10−4. We investigate the correlation between L[Nii] and LIR, as well as the dependence of L[Nii]/LIR on LIR, infrared colors (f60/f100) and the OIII 88 μm to [N ii] luminosity ratio. We find that L[Nii] strongly, and almost linearly correlates with LIR for star-forming galaxies, namely log LIR = (4.23 ± 0.33) + (0.99 ± 0.05) log L[NII] (see Fig. 1). The scatter in this relation is mainly due to the variation of hardness, and/or high ionization parameter, of the background UV field.

Type
Contributed Papers
Copyright
Copyright © International Astronomical Union 2013