A systematic study on the aromatic and aliphatic hydrocarbon emission features of nearby galaxies using AKARI near-IR spectra

TL;DR

This study systematically analyzes near-infrared spectra from AKARI to understand how interstellar hydrocarbon dust, especially aromatic and aliphatic hydrocarbons, varies across different galaxy types and environments.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of hydrocarbon emission features in a large sample of galaxies, revealing how their luminosity ratios depend on galaxy IR luminosity and continuum color, indicating dust processing effects.

Findings

Luminosity ratio of aliphatic to aromatic hydrocarbons decreases with galaxy IR luminosity.

Galaxies with bluer 4 um continuum colors have higher aliphatic-to-aromatic ratios.

Obscured galactic nuclei in ULIRGs can cause extremely low aliphatic-to-aromatic ratios.

Abstract

Interstellar hydrocarbon dust containing aromatic and aliphatic hydrocarbons, like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), is believed to be processed by various factors including UV radiation fields and mechanical shocks in the galactic environments. We systematically investigate the processing of hydrocarbon dust, especially the likely causes for the variations of the luminosity ratio of aliphatic to aromatic hydrocarbon emission features, using the near-infrared (IR) spectral features at wavelengths 3.3 um and 3.4-3.6 um observed with AKARI/IRC. We analyzed 243 near-IR spectra of 240 star-forming (U)LIRGs (the total IR luminosity, $L_\rm{IR}>10^{11}\ L_\odot$), 119 spectra of 105 star-forming IRGs ($10^{10}\ L_\odot<L_\rm{IR}<10^{11}\ L_\odot$), and 94 spectra of 65 sub-IRGs ($L_\rm{IR}<10^{10}\ L_\odot$), in addition to 232 spectra of 36 Galactic HII regions as a reference sample. We performed near-IR spectral model fitting to estimate the luminosities of the aromatic and aliphatic hydrocarbon features and the HI recombination line Br$\rm{\alpha}$. The result indicates that the luminosity ratios of the aliphatic to the aromatic hydrocarbons ($L_\rm{ali}/L_\rm{aro}$) in the sample galaxies show considerably large variations, compared to those in the Galactic HII regions, $L_\rm{ali}/L_\rm{aro}$ systematically decreasing with $L_\rm{IR}$ and $L_\rm{Br\alpha}$. We find that (sub-)IRGs with continuum colors bluer at 4 um tend to have higher $L_\rm{ali}/L_\rm{aro}$, which is likely to reflect the intrinsic nature of PAHs outside the HII region where the PAHs remain non-processed by strong UV radiation fields. We also find that some ULIRGs with continuum colors redder at 4 um show extremely low $L_\rm{ali}/L_\rm{aro}$, which is likely to be caused by blending aliphatic emission and absorption features due to the presence of an obscured galactic nucleus in merger systems.