Exciting molecular hydrogen in the central galaxies of cooling flows

Details Exciting molecular hydrogen in the central galaxies of cooling flows Exciting molecular hydrogen in the central galaxies of cooling flows

2002-06-21

arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0206382v1

Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc.337:63,2002

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

9 pages, 4 figures; to appear in MNRAS alongside Edge et al. (2002) (astro-ph/0206379)

Scientific paper

10.1046/j.1365-8711.2002.05791.x

The origin of rovibrational H_2 emission in the central galaxies of cooling flow clusters is poorly understood. Here we address this issue using data from our near-infrared spectroscopic survey of 32 of the most line luminous such systems, presented in the companion paper by Edge et al. (2002). We consider excitation by X-rays from the surrounding intracluster medium, UV radiation from young stars, and shocks. The v=1-0 K-band lines with upper levels within 10^4 K of the ground state appear to be mostly thermalised (implying gas densities above ~10^5 cm^-3), with excitation temperatures typically exceeding 2000K, as found earlier by Jaffe, Bremer and van der Werf (2001). Together with the lack of strong v=2-0 lines in the H-band, this rules out UV fluorescence. Using the CLOUDY photoionisation code, we deduce that the H_2 lines can originate in a population of dense clouds, exposed to the same hot (T~50000K) stellar continuum as the lower density gas which produces the bulk of the forbidden optical line emission in the H-alpha luminous systems. This dense gas may be in the form of self-gravitating clouds deposited directly by the cooling flow, or may instead be produced in the high-pressure zones behind strong shocks. Furthermore, the shocked gas is likely to be gravitationally unstable, so collisions between the larger clouds may lead to the formation of globular clusters.

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