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Abstract:

We present deep JWST/NIRCam and MIRI imaging of Ion1, a previously confirmed Lyman continuum (LyC)-emitting galaxy at zspec = 3.794. Together with existing Hubble Space Telescope imaging, these new observations from the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey program enable a joint analysis of Ion1’s LyC, rest-frame UV, stellar, and dust emission with unprecedented detail. We report the first detection of dust emission at rest-frame ∼3 μm in a high-redshift LyC-emitting galaxy using MIRI/F1500W. Our analysis suggests a porous distribution of dust in Ion1, with regions exhibiting evidence of dust deficit coinciding both with LyC-emitting regions and with the peak of Hα emission. Furthermore, multiband NIRCam imaging reveals a strong far-UV-to-optical color gradient, where LyC-emitting regions appear significantly bluer than the rest of Ion1. Spatially resolved spectral energy distribution fitting confirms that this color gradient is primarily driven by spatially varying dust attenuation. Together, these findings suggest that Ion1’s LyC emission originates from a compact star-forming complex near its stellar-light centroid, where stellar feedback carves out low-H i-column-density channels, facilitating LyC escape. However, only a fraction of these LyC photons—specifically those along sightlines with minimal H i obscuration—ultimately escape and reach observers. This work underscores the critical role of dust and neutral gas geometry in shaping LyC escape in galaxies at high redshifts. Anisotropic LyC escape may be a common feature in the early Universe, which must be properly incorporated to constrain the epoch of reionization.

Abstract:

Strong gravitational lensing offers a powerful and direct probe of dark matter, galaxy evolution and cosmology, yet strong lenses are rare: only 1 in roughly 10,000 massive galaxies can lens a background source into multiple images. The European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope, with its unique combination of high-resolution imaging and wide-area sky coverage, is set to transform this field. In its first quick data release, covering just 0.45% of the full survey area, around 500 high-quality strong lens candidates have been identified using a synergy of machine learning, citizen science and expert visual inspection. This dataset includes exotic systems such as compound lenses and edge-on disk lenses, demonstrating Euclid’s capacity to probe the lens parameter space. The machine learning models developed to discover strong lenses in Euclid data are able to find lenses with high purity rates, confirming that the mission’s forecast of discovering over 100,000 strong lenses is achievable during its 6-year mission. This will increase the number of known strong lenses by two orders of magnitude, transforming the science that can be done with strong lensing.

Abstract:

We present new K -band spectroscopy for the giant elliptical galaxy M87 in the Virgo cluster, taken with the Large Binocular Telescope Utility Camera in the Infrared (LUCI) spectrograph at the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). The new data are used to study line strengths of K -band absorption features from different chemical species, namely Fe, Mg, Ca, Na, and CO, as a function of galactocentric distance, out to ∼40″ from the center (about half of the galaxy effective radius). The radial trends of spectral indices are compared to those for the bulge of M31, observed with the same instrument. For M87, most K -band indices exhibit flat radial profiles, with the exception of NaI2.21, which decreases outward, with a negative radial gradient. Significant offsets are found between indices for M87 and those for the bulge of M31, the latter having weaker line strengths for almost all features, but Fe and Ca, for which we find similar trends in both systems. We find that the behavior of CO features – most prominent in giant stars – is difficult to explain, consistent with previous results for the central regions of massive galaxies. In particular, the CO indices are stronger in M87 than M31, and do not exhibit significant radial gradients in M87, despite its IMF being bottom heavier than M31 especially in its central region. Predictions of state-of-the-art stellar population models, based on results from the optical spectral range, are able to match only the Na and Ca indices of M87, while a significant mismatch is found for all other indices. This shows that state-of-the-art stellar population models should be improved significantly in order to provide reliable constraints on the stellar population content of galaxies in the near-infrared spectral range.

Abstract:

New extragalactic measurements of the cloud population-averaged star formation efficiency per free-fall time, ϵ ff , from PHANGS show little sign of a theoretically predicted dependence on the gas virial level and weak variation with cloud-scale gas velocity dispersion. We explore ways to bring theory into consistency with the observations, particularly by highlighting systematic variations in internal density structure that must accompany an increase in virial parameter typically found toward denser galaxy centers. To introduce these variations into conventional turbulence-regulated star formation models, we adopted three adjustments, all motivated by the expectation that the background host galaxy has an influence on the cloud scale: (1) We incorporate self-gravity and an internal density distribution that contains a broad power-law (PL) component and resembles the structure observed in local resolved clouds; (2) We allow the internal gas kinematics to include motion in the background potential and let this regulate the onset of self-gravitation; (3) We assume that the distribution of gas densities is in a steady state for only a fraction of a cloud free-fall time. In practice, these changes significantly reduce the efficiencies predicted in multi-free-fall (MFF) scenarios compared to purely lognormal probability density functions (PDFs) and tie efficiency variations to variations in the slope of the PL α . We fit the model to PHANGS measurements of ϵ ff to identify the PL slopes that yield an optimal match. These slopes vary systematically with galactic environment in the sense that gas that sits furthest from virial balance contains fractionally more gas at high density. We relate this to the equilibrium response of gas in the presence of the galactic gravitational potential, which forces more gas to high density than characteristic of fully self-gravitating clouds. Viewing the efficiency variations as originating with time evolution in the PL slope, our findings would alternatively imply coordination of the cloud evolutionary stage within environment. With this “galaxy regulation” behavior included, our preferred “self-gravitating” multi-freefall sgMFF models function similarly to the original, roughly “virialized cloud” single-free-fall models. However, outside the environment of disks with their characteristic regulation, the flexible MFF models may be better suited.

Abstract:

Recent hydrodynamical simulations of isolated barred disc galaxies have suggested a structural change in the distribution of the interstellar medium (ISM) around a stellar mass M * of 10 10 M ⊙ . In the higher-mass regime ( M ∗ ≥ 10 10 M ⊙ ), we observe the formation of a central gas and stellar disc with a typical size of a few hundred parsecs connected through lanes to the ends of the stellar bar. In the lower-mass regime ( M ∗ < 10 10 M ⊙ ), such an inner disc is absent and the gas component exhibits a more chaotic distribution. Observations of nearby star-forming galaxies support the existence of such a change. These inner gas discs may represent an important intermediate scale connecting the large kiloparsec-scale structures with the nuclear (sub-parsec) region, transporting gas inwards to fuel the central supermassive black hole (SMBH). For this work we used an extended set of high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations of isolated disc galaxies with initial properties (i.e. stellar mass, gas fraction, stellar disc scale length, and the bulge mass fraction) with properties covering the range of galaxies in the PHANGS sample to investigate this change of regime. We studied the physical properties of the star-forming ISM in both stellar mass regimes and extracted a few physical tracers: the inner Lindblad resonance (ILR), the probability distribution function (PDF), the virial parameter, and the Mach number. In line with observations, we confirm a structure transition in the simulations that occurs between a stellar mass of 10 9.5 and 10 10 M ⊙ . We show that the physical origin of this change of regime is driven by stellar feedback and its contribution relative to the underlying gravitational potential. With their shallower potential and typically higher gas mass fraction, lower-mass disc PHANGS galaxies combine two ingredients that significantly delay or even prevent the formation of a central gas (and stellar) disc. These results shed some light on the observed properties of star-forming barred galaxies and have implications for the star formation regimes, the growth of central structures, and the overall secular evolution of disc galaxies.