Disentangling the Physical Origin of Emission Line Ratio Offsets at High Redshift with Spatially Resolved Spectroscopy

We present spatially resolved Hubble Space Telescope grism spectroscopy of 15 galaxies at z ∼ 0.8 drawn from the DEEP2 survey. We analyze Hα+[N ii], [S ii], and [S iii] emission on kiloparsec scales to explore which mechanisms are powering emission lines at high redshifts, testing which processes may be responsible for the well-known offset of high-redshift galaxies from the z ∼ 0 locus in the [O iii]/Hβ versus [N ii]/Hα Baldwin—Phillips—Terlevich (BPT) excitation diagram. We study spatially resolved emission-line maps to examine evidence for active galactic nuclei (AGN), shocks, diffuse ionized gas (DIG), or escaping ionizing radiation, all of which may contribute to the BPT offsets observed in our sample. We do not find significant evidence of AGN in our sample and quantify that, on average, AGN would need to contribute ∼25% of the Hα flux in the central resolution element in order to cause the observed BPT offsets. We find weak (2σ) evidence of DIG emission at low surface brightnesses, yielding an implied total DIG emission fraction of ∼20%, which is not significant enough to be the dominant emission line driver in our sample. In general we find that the observed emission is dominated by star-forming H ii regions. We discuss trends with demographic properties and the possible role of α-enhanced abundance patterns in the emission spectra of high-redshift galaxies. Our results indicate that photoionization modeling with stellar population synthesis inputs is a valid tool to explore the specific star formation properties which may cause BPT offsets, to be explored in future work.

Measuring The Tensile Strain of Wood By Visible And Near-Infrared Spatially Resolved Spectroscopy

Wood has various mechanical properties, so stiffness evaluation is critical for quality management. Using conventional strain gauges constantly is high cost, also challenging to measure precious wood materials due to the use of strong adhesive. This study demonstrates the correlation between light scattering changes inside the wood cell walls and tensile strain. A multifiber-based visible-near-infrared (Vis–NIR) spatially resolved spectroscopy (SRS) system was designed to rapidly and conventiently acquire such light scattering changes. For the preliminary experiment, samples with different thicknesses were measured to evaluate the influence of thickness. The differences in Vis–NIR SRS spectral data diminish with an increase in sample thickness, which suggests that the SRS method can successfully measure the whole strain (i.e., surface and inside) of wood samples. Then, for the primary experiment, 18 wood samples with the same thickness (2 mm) were tested to construct a strain calibration model. The prediction accuracy was characterized by a determination coefficient (R2) of 0.86 with a root mean squared error (RMSE) of 297.89 με for five-fold cross-validation; for test validation, The prediction accuracy was characterized by an R2 of 0.82 and an RMSE of 345.44 με.

X-ray spectroscopy of the starburst feedback in 30 Doradus

ABSTRACT X-ray observations provide a potentially powerful tool to study starburst feedback. The analysis and interpretation of such observations remain challenging, however, due to various complications, including the non-isothermality of the diffuse hot plasma and the inhomogeneity of the foreground absorption. We here illustrate such complications and a way to mitigate their effects by presenting an X-ray spectroscopy of the 30 Doradus nebula in the Large Magellanic Clouds, based on a 100 ks Suzaku observation. We measure the thermal and chemical properties of the hot plasma and quantitatively confront them with the feedback expected from embedded massive stars. We find that our spatially resolved measurements can be well reproduced by a global modelling of the nebula with a lognormal temperature distribution of the plasma emission measure and a lognormal foreground absorption distribution. The metal abundances and total mass of the plasma are consistent with the chemically enriched mass ejection expected from the central OB association and a $\sim 55{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$ mass-loading from the ambient medium. The total thermal energy of the plasma is smaller than what is expected from a simple superbubble model, demonstrating that important channels of energy loss are not accounted for. Our analysis indeed shows tentative evidence for a diffuse non-thermal X-ray component, indicating that cosmic ray acceleration needs to be considered in such a young starburst region. Finally, we suggest that the lognormal modelling may be suitable for the X-ray spectral analysis of other giant H ii regions, especially when spatially resolved spectroscopy is not practical.