The Nature of Starburst Activity in M82

By N. F. Förster Schreiber, R. Genzel, D. Lutz, A. Sternberg. 2000

159 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present new evolutionary synthesis models of M82 based mainly on observations consisting of near-infrared integral field spectroscopy and mid-infrared spectroscopy. The models incorporate stellar evolution, spectral synthesis, and photoionization modeling and are optimized forλ = 1-45 μm observations of starburst galaxies. The data allow us to model the starburst regions on scales as small as 25 pc. We investigate the initial mass function (IMF) of the stars and constrain quantitatively the spatial and temporal evolution of starburst activity in M82. We find a typical decay timescale for individual burst sites of a few million years. The data are consistent with the formation of very massive stars (≳50-100 M☉) and require a flattening of the starburst IMF below a few solar masses, assuming a Salpeter slope dN/dm ∝ m-2.35 at higher masses. Our results are well matched by a scenario in which the global starburst activity in M82 occurred in two successive episodes each lasting a few million years, peaking about 107 yr and 5 × 106 yr ago. The first episode took place throughout the central regions of M82 and was particularly intense at the nucleus, while the second episode occurred predominantly in a circumnuclear ring and along the stellar bar. We interpret this sequence as resulting from the gravitational interaction between M82 and its neighbor M81, and subsequent bar-driven evolution. The short burst duration on all spatial scales indicates strong negative feedback effects of starburst activity, both locally and globally. Simple energetics considerations suggest that the collective mechanical energy released by massive stars was able to rapidly inhibit star formation after the onset of each episode.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1ddcb052aa5373dabe8d3ec951cf4c645eed41bb

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Citations in the corpus

What Do We Learn from IRAC Observations of Galaxies at 2 < z < 3.5? (2006, background): “Fortunately, estimates of stellar mass from modeling the broad-band SEDs are generally more robust than estimates of dust content and stellar age (Bell& de Jong 2001; Shapley et al. 2001; Papovich et al. 2001; Förster Schreiber et al. 2004).”
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An origin for multiphase gas in galactic winds and haloes (2015, unknown): “' 5 − 10 M yr−1 (e.g., Rieke et al. 1980; Förster Schreiber et al. 2001, 2003).”
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Ultradeep Near-Infrared ISAAC Observations of the Hubble Deep Field South: Observations, Reduction, Multicolor Catalog, and Photometric Redshifts (2002, methodology): “Results from the second and larger FIRES field centered on MS 1054 03 (Förster Schreiber et al. 2003) should provide more insight into this issue.”
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Dusty Star Forming Galaxies at High Redshift (2014, background): “They discard the mid-IR portion of the model spectrum and replace it with data from ISOCAM (Smith et al., 1989; Charmandaris et al., 1997; Laurent et al., 2000; Förster Schreiber et al., 2001; Roussel et al., 2001).”
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