SDSS IV MaNGA – spatially resolved diagnostic diagrams: a proof that many galaxies are LIERs

By F. Belfiore, R. Maiolino, C. Maraston, Eric Emsellem, M. Bershady, Karen L. Masters, R. Yan, D. Bizyaev, M. Boquien, J. Brownstein and 10 more. 2016

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We study the spatially resolved excitation properties of the ionised gas in a sample of 646 galaxies using integral field spectroscopy data from SDSS-IV MaNGA. Making use of Baldwin-Philips-Terlevich diagnostic diagrams we demonstrate the ubiquitous presence of extended (kpc scale) low ionisation emission-line regions (LIERs) in both star forming and quiescent galaxies. In star forming galaxies LIER emission can be associated with diffuse ionised gas, most evident as extra-planar emission in edge-on systems. In addition, we identify two main classes of galaxies displaying LIER emission: `central LIER' (cLIER) galaxies, where central LIER emission is spatially extended, but accompanied by star formation at larger galactocentric distances, and `extended LIER' (eLIER) galaxies, where LIER emission is extended throughout the whole galaxy. In eLIER and cLIER galaxies, LIER emission is associated with radially flat, low H$\alpha$ equivalent width of line emission ($

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/af6c2f26a29c3410768716b1b717bc34a0780875

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Citations in the corpus

Cold Molecular Outflows in the Local Universe and Their Feedback Effect on Galaxies (2018, background): “…class as ‘LIER’, i.e. dropping the ‘N’ which stands for ‘Nuclear’ in the original acronym) and correlates with the old stellar population, and this can be explained in terms of excitation by the hard radiation field produced by evolved post-AGB stars (e.g. Sarzi et al. 2010; Belfiore et al. 2016).”
Nebular Continuum and Line Emission in Stellar Population Synthesis Models (2016, background): “While some cases are certainly still driven by the presence of a weak AGN, the discovery of spatially extended (∼kpc scales) LIER-like emission has led to work suggesting that hot, evolved stars could be responsible for the ionizing radiation in other cases (Singh et al. 2013; Belfiore et al. 2016).”
SDSS-IV MaNGA : the impact of diffuse ionized gas on emission-line ratios, interpretation of diagnostic diagrams and gas metallicity measurements (2016, background): “…[N ii]/Hα and [S ii]/Hα of DIG would move the position of a star-forming galaxy toward the composite or LI(N)ER region (e.g., Sarzi et al 2006; Stasińska et al. 2008; Yan & Blanton 2012; Kehrig et al. 2012; Singh et al. 2013; Gomes et al. 2016; Belfiore et al. 2016a,b) on the BPT diagrams.”
SDSS IV MaNGA – metallicity and nitrogen abundance gradients in local galaxies (2017, methodology): “Following the revised galaxy classification scheme proposed in Belfiore et al. (2016b) we classify galaxies according to their emission line properties based on the [SII]/Hα versus [OIII]/Hβ Baldwin-Philips-Terlevich (BPT, Baldwin et al. 1981; Veilleux & Osterbrock 1987; Kewley et al. 2001) diagram…”