Bursts of star formation in the central regions of galaxies as seen with radio glasses

Fecha/Hora: Miercoles 2 de Julio de 2014  a las 12:00.
Lugar: Sala de Conferencias Facultad de Ciencias.
Organiza: FISYMAT, Máster en Física y Matemáticas
Conferenciante: Dr. Miguel Ángel  Pérez Torres (Centro de la Física del Cosmos de Aragón, CEFCA, Teruel)

Abstract:
Luminous and Ultra-Luminous Infrared Galaxies (U/LIRGs) do radiate copious amounts of radio emission, both thermal (free-free) and  non-thermal (mainly synchrotron). This is very handy since, unlike optical and infra-red observations, radio is not obscured by the ubiquitous dust present in U/LIRGs, which allows a direct view of the ongoing activity in the hearts of those prolific star-forming galaxies.
In this talk, I will first justify the need for high-angular resolution radio studies of local U/LIRGs, discuss the energy budget and the magnetic field, as well as IC and synchrotron losses in U/LIRGs, and present some selected results obtained by our team on high-angular resolution radio continuum studies of U/LIRGs. Among other results, I show the impressive discovery of an extremely prolific supernova factory in the central ˜150 pc of the galaxy Arp 299-A (D = 45 Mpc) and the monitoring of a large number of very compact radio sources in it, the detection and precise location of the long-sought AGN in Arp 299-A. A movie summarizing those results can be found here.
All those results demonstrate that very-high angular resolution studies of nearby U/LIRGs are of high relevance for the comprehension of both local and high-z starbursting galaxies.