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Star formation and nuclear activity in luminous infrared galaxies: an infrared through radio review

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Abstract

Nearby galaxies offer unique laboratories allowing multi-wavelength spatially resolved studies of the interstellar medium, star formation and nuclear activity across a broad range of physical conditions. In particular, detailed studies of individual local luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) are crucial for gaining a better understanding of these processes and for developing and testing models that are used to explain statistical studies of large populations of such galaxies at high redshift for which it is currently impossible to reach a sufficient physical resolution. Here, we provide an overview of the impact of spatially resolved infrared, sub-millimetre and radio observations in the study of the interstellar medium, star formation and active galactic nuclei as well as their interplay in local LIRGs. We also present an overview of the modelling of their spectral energy distributions using state-of-the-art radiative transfer codes. These contribute necessary and powerful ‘workhorse’ tools for the study of LIRGs (and their more luminous counterparts) at higher redshifts which are unresolved in observations. We describe how spatially-resolved time-domain observations have recently opened a new window to study the nuclear activity in LIRGs. We describe in detail the observational characteristics of Arp 299 which is one of the best studied local LIRGs and exemplifies the power of the combination of time-domain and high-resolution observations at infrared to radio wavelengths together with radiative transfer modelling used to explain the spectral energy distributions of its different components. We summarise the previous achievements obtained using high-spatial resolution observations and provide an outlook into what we can expect to achieve with future facilities.

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Notes

  1. https://www.jwst.nasa.gov/

  2. https://www.eso.org/

  3. http://www.gemini.edu

  4. http://www.keckobservatory.org

  5. https://subarutelescope.org/en/

  6. http://www.vla.nrao.edu/

  7. https://www.e-merlin.ac.uk

  8. https://www.almaobservatory.org/

  9. http://iram-institute.org/EN/noema-project.php

  10. https://www.evlbi.org/

  11. https://science.nrao.edu/facilities/vlba

  12. https://www.eaobservatory.org/jcmt/

  13. https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/spitzer/main/index.html.

  14. https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/akari.

  15. https://sci.esa.int/web/herschel.

  16. https://herschel.sussex.ac.uk/.

  17. http://goals.ipac.caltech.edu/

  18. http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/.

  19. The GOALS sample contains 21 ULIRGs and 181 LIRGs from the IRAS Bright Galaxy Sample (Sanders et al. 2003) and is thus a large, statistically complete sample of 202 local (distances of less than 400 Mpc) IR-luminous galaxies.

  20. The strength of the silicate feature is measured as; \(S_{{\mathrm{Si}}} = {\mathrm{ln}} \frac{f_{{\mathrm{obs}}}(9.7\mu \mathrm{m})}{f_{{\mathrm{cont}}}(9.7\mu {\mathrm{m}})}\), where \(f_{\mathrm{obs}}(9.7\mu {\mathrm{m}})\) is the observed flux density at the feature (in absorption or emission) and \(f_{{\mathrm{cont}}}(9.7\mu {\mathrm{m}})\) is the flux density at the continuum. In this definition, a positive value of the strength means that the silicate feature is in emission and a negative value the silicate feature is in absorption.

  21. http://www.gmrt.ncra.tifr.res.in/

  22. http://www.lofar.org/

  23. https://www.mwatelescope.org/)

  24. https://www.skatelescope.org/

  25. For a discussion of the rotational spectra of diatomic molecules, see chapter 15 in Wilson et al. 2013.

  26. There has been some confusion with the naming of the galaxies that make up the Arp 299 system. Herrero-Illana (2014) gives a detailed account of this “tale of confusion”. Arp 299-A has often been incorrectly called IC 694, although Yamaoka et al. (1998) had already pointed out that IC 694 was actually a small, unrelated E/S0 galaxy located to the northwest of the merging system of galaxies, while NGC 3690 refers to entire system. In this review, we have adopted the name Arp 299 (rather than NGC 3690) to refer to the entire system.

  27. SNe 2005U (type IIb), 2010O (Type Ib), 2010P (Type IIb), 2019lqo (Type IIb), and 2020fkb (Type Ib); note that SN 2018lrd reported close to the position of SN 2020fkb has been identified as a false detection due to image subtraction residuals (Ting-Wan Chen, private communication).

  28. http://www.mpe.mpg.de/ir/micado.

  29. https://www.stsci.edu/roman

  30. http://www.e-merlin.ac.uk/.

  31. http://lirgi.iaa.es/.

  32. https://www.sarao.ac.za/.

  33. https://www.atnf.csiro.au/projects/askap/index.html.

  34. https://ngvla.nrao.edu/

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Acknowledgements

We thank an anonymous referee for many useful comments and suggestions that have significantly improved our manuscript. We also thank Stuart Ryder for a careful reading of the whole paper, and Duncan Farrah, Erkki Kankare, Eskil Varenius and Naím Ramírez-Olivencia for comments on different sections of the paper. We also thank Naím Ramírez-Olivencia for the LOFAR image of Arp 299 in Fig. 25, in advance of publication, and Miguel Pereira-Santaella, Eric Murphy, and Eskil Varenius for producing new versions of their original figures (Figs. 4, 12-left, and 22-bottom, respectively). MPT acknowledges financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa award to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709) and through grant PGC2018-098915-B-C21 (MCI/AEI/FEDER, UE) as well as from the visitor and mobility program of the Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO (FINCA), funded by the Academy of Finland grant nr 306531. AA-H acknowledges support through grant PGC 2018-094671-B-I00 (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE). AA-H work was done under project No. MDM-2017-0737 Unidad de Excelencia “María de Maeztu” - Centro de Astrobiología (INTA-CSIC). SA gratefully acknowledges support from an ERC Advanced Grant 789410 and from the Swedish Research Council. AE acknowledges support from the Cyprus Research & Innovation Foundation (GRATOS; EXCELLENCE/1216/0207) and the European Space Agency (CYGNUS; ESA contract 400126896/19/NL/MH).

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Correspondence to Miguel Pérez-Torres.

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Pérez-Torres, M., Mattila, S., Alonso-Herrero, A. et al. Star formation and nuclear activity in luminous infrared galaxies: an infrared through radio review. Astron Astrophys Rev 29, 2 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00159-020-00128-x

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