Itziar Aretxaga

Hands-on observational astronomy is valued as one of the most important experiences by the alumni of the International Schools for Young Astronomers over the years. These are three-week long intensive schools that target specifically graduate students coming from astronomically underdeveloped countries and isolated groups. We recount our experience with observational tutoring that goes from a few nights to a few hours of observational experience. The thrill of discovery through the access to the telescopes is an experience difficult to transmit through database analysis alone. Even remote real-time observing has a beneficial experience for the students. We offer a selection of projects and the outcome this training has had over the years in the African continent.

We present a new cosmologically motivated mock redshift survey of the Dusty Star-Forming Galaxy population. Our mock survey is based on the Bolshoi–Planck dark-matter halo simulation and covers an area of 5.3 deg². Using a semi-empirical approach, we generate a light cone and populate the dark-matter haloes with galaxies. Infrared properties are assigned to the galaxies based on theoretical and empirical relations from the literature. Additionally, background galaxies are gravitationally lensed by dark-matter haloes along the line-of-sight assuming a point-mass model approximation. We characterize the mock survey by measuring the star formation rate density, integrated number counts, redshift distribution, and infrared luminosity function. When compared with single-dish and interferometric observations, the predictions from our mock survey closely follow the compiled results from the literature. We have also directed this study towards characterizing one of the extragalactic legacy surveys to be observed with the TolTEC camera at the Large Millimeter Telescope: the 0.8 sq. degree Ultra Deep Survey, with expected depths of 0.025, 0.018 and 0.012 mJy beam⁻¹ at 1.1, 1.4 and 2.0 mm. Exploiting the clustering information in our mock survey, we investigate its impact on the effect of flux boosting by the fainter population of dusty galaxies, finding that clustering can increase the median boosting by 0.5 per cent at 1.1 mm, 0.8 per cent at 1.4 mm and, 2.0 per cent at 2.0 mm, and with higher dispersion.

Context. Blazars are the most numerous class of very-high-energy (VHE; E > 100 GeV) gamma-ray emitters. At present, measured redshifts are available only for about 80% of the VHE gamma-ray sources; this is mainly due to the difficulty in measuring reliable redshifts from their nearly featureless continuum optical spectra. Aims. As the VHE sky is still vastly unexplored, VHE blazars are unique objects. High-energy spectra from blazars are used for extragalactic background light studies, to investigate topics related to cosmology or fundamental physics, and to find the source luminosity. This allows one to study the properties of the host galaxy, its black hole, and the gamma-ray emission mechanisms. All of these studies require suitable estimations of the blazar distance, which has motivated the use of novel approaches when measuring the redshift of faint optical lines in their spectra is very uncertain. Methods. We present the new optical spectroscopic observations of S5 0716+714 and its environment taken on December 20, 2019, with the Gemini GMOS North telescope. Results. We do not find any absorption lines in the blazar spectrum; however, we were able to get the redshifts of 21 other galaxies in the field, 15 of which form a group at z = 0.2304 ± 0.0013. Performing a population study of galaxies, we found that S5 0716+714 belongs to this group with a probability > 99%.

We report ALMA detections of [C ii] and a dust continuum in Az9, a multiply imaged galaxy behind the Frontier Field cluster MACS J0717.5+3745. The bright [C ii] emission line provides a spectroscopic redshift of z = 4.274. This strongly lensed (μ = 7 ± 1) galaxy has an intrinsic stellar mass of only 2 × 10⁹ M _⊙ and a total star formation rate of 26 M _⊙ yr⁻¹ (∼80% of which is dust-obscured). Using public magnification maps, we reconstruct the [C ii] emission in the source plane to reveal a stable, rotation-dominated disk with V/σ = 5.3, which is >2× higher than predicted from simulations for similarly high-redshift, low-mass galaxies. In the source plane, the [C ii] disk has a half-light radius of 1.8 kpc and, along with the dust, is spatially offset from the peak of the stellar light by 1.4 kpc. Az9 is not deficient in [C ii]; L _{[C II]}/L _IR = 0.0027, consistent with local and high-redshift normal star-forming galaxies. While dust-obscured star formation is expected to dominate in higher-mass galaxies, such a large reservoir of dust and gas in a lower-mass disk galaxy 1.4 Gyr after the Big Bang challenges our picture of early galaxy evolution. Furthermore, the prevalence of such low-mass dusty galaxies has important implications for the selection of the highest-redshift dropout galaxies with JWST. As one of the lowest stellar mass galaxies at z > 4 to be detected in a dust continuum and [C ii], Az9 is an excellent laboratory in which to study early dust enrichment in the interstellar medium.

We report ALMA detections of [CII] and dust continuum in Az9, a multiply-imaged galaxy behind the Frontier Field cluster MACSJ0717.5+3745. The bright [CII] emission line provides a spectroscopic redshift of z = 4.274. This strongly lensed (mu = 7 +/- 1) galaxy has an intrinsic stellar mass of only 2e9 Msun and a total star formation rate of 26 Msun/yr (~80% of which is dust obscured). Using public magnification maps, we reconstruct the [CII] emission in the source plane to reveal a stable, rotation-dominated disk with V/sigma = 5.3, which is > 2x higher than predicted from simulations for similarly high-redshift, low-mass galaxies. In the source plane, the [CII] disk has a half-light radius of 1.8 kpc and, along with the dust, is spatially offset from the peak of the stellar light by 1.4 kpc. Az9 is not deficient in [CII]; L[CII]/LIR = 0.0027 consistent with local and high redshift normal star forming galaxies. While dust-obscured star formation is expected to dominate in higher mass galaxies, such a large reservoir of dust and gas in a lower mass disk galaxy 1.4 Gyr after the Big Bang challenges our picture of early galaxy evolution. Furthermore, the prevalence of such low-mass dusty galaxies has important implications for the selection of the highest redshift dropout galaxies with JWST. As one of the lowest stellar mass galaxies at z > 4 to be detected in dust continuum and [CII], Az9 is an excellent laboratory in which to study early dust enrichment in the interstellar medium.

Lyman-break galaxy (LBG) candidates at z ≳ 10 are rapidly being identified in James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)/NIRCam observations. Due to the (redshifted) break produced by neutral hydrogen absorption of rest-frame UV photons, these sources are expected to drop out in the bluer filters while being well detected in redder filters. However, here we show that dust-enshrouded star-forming galaxies at lower redshifts (z ≲ 7) may also mimic the near-infrared (near-IR) colors of z > 10 LBGs, representing potential contaminants in LBG candidate samples. First, we analyze CEERS-DSFG-1, a NIRCam dropout undetected in the F115W and F150W filters but detected at longer wavelengths. Combining the JWST data with (sub)millimeter constraints, including deep NOEMA interferometric observations, we show that this source is a dusty star-forming galaxy (DSFG) at z ≈ 5.1. We also present a tentative 2.6σ SCUBA-2 detection at 850 μm around a recently identified z ≈ 16 LBG candidate in the same field and show that, if the emission is real and associated with this candidate, the available photometry is consistent with a z ∼ 5 dusty galaxy with strong nebular emission lines despite its blue near-IR colors. Further observations on this candidate are imperative to mitigate the low confidence of this tentative submillimeter emission and its positional uncertainty. Our analysis shows that robust (sub)millimeter detections of NIRCam dropout galaxies likely imply z ∼ 4–6 redshift solutions, where the observed near-IR break would be the result of a strong rest-frame optical Balmer break combined with high dust attenuation and strong nebular line emission, rather than the rest-frame UV Lyman break. This provides evidence that DSFGs may contaminate searches for ultra-high redshift LBG candidates from JWST observations.

The complex physics involved in atmospheric turbulence makes it very difficult for ground-based astronomy to build accurate scintillation models and develop efficient methodologies to remove this highly structured noise from valuable astronomical observations. We argue that a deep-learning approach can bring a significant advance to treat this problem because of deep neural networks’ inherent ability to abstract nonlinear patterns over a broad scale range. We propose an architecture composed of long short-term memory cells and an incremental training strategy inspired by transfer and curriculum learning. We develop a scintillation model and employ an empirical method to generate a vast catalog of atmospheric-noise realizations and train the network with representative data. We face two complexity axes: the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) and the degree of structure in the noise. Hence, we train our recurrent network to recognize simulated astrophysical pointlike sources embedded in three structured-noise levels, with a raw-data S/N ranging from 3 to 0.1. We find that a slow and repetitive increase in complexity is crucial during training to obtain a robust and stable learning rate that can transfer information through different data contexts. We probe our recurrent model with synthetic observational data, designing alongside a calibration methodology for flux measurements. Furthermore, we implement traditional matched filtering (MF) to compare its performance with our neural network, finding that our final trained network can successfully clean structured noise and significantly enhance the S/N compared to raw data and in a more robust way than traditional MF.

To study the nuclear (≲1 kpc) dust of nearby (z < 0.1) quasi-stellar objects (QSOs), we obtained new near-infrared (NIR) high angular resolution (∼0.″3) photometry in the H and Ks bands for 13 QSOs with available mid-infrared (MIR) high angular resolution spectroscopy (∼7.5–13.5 μm). We find that in most QSOs, the NIR emission is unresolved. We subtract the contribution from the accretion disk, which decreases from NIR (∼35%) to MIR (∼2.4%). We also estimate these percentages assuming a bluer accretion disk and find that the contribution in the MIR is nearly seven times larger. We find that the majority of objects (64%, 9/13) are better fitted by the disk+wind H17 model, while others can be fitted by the smooth F06 (14%, 2/13), clumpy N08 (7%, 1/13), clumpy H10 (7%, 1/13), and two-phase media S16 (7%, 1/13) models. However, if we assume the bluer accretion disk, the models fit only 2/13 objects. We measured two NIR-to-MIR spectral indexes, α _{NIR−MIR(1.6–8.7 μm)} and α _{NIR−MIR(2.2–8.7 μm)}, and two MIR spectral indexes, α _{MIR(7.8–9.8 μm)} and α _{MIR(9.8–11.7 μm)}, from models and observations. From observations, we find that the NIR-to-MIR spectral indexes are ∼−1.1, and the MIR spectral indexes are ∼−0.3. Comparing the synthetic and observed values, we find that none of the models simultaneously match the measured NIR-to-MIR and 7.8–9.8 μm slopes. However, we note that measuring α _{MIR(7.8–9.8 μm)} on the starburst-subtracted Spitzer/IRS spectrum gives values of the slopes (∼−2) that are similar to the synthetic values obtained from the models.

An analytical approach is proposed to study the evolution of the star-forming galaxy (SFG) main sequence (MS) and the fraction of dust-obscured star formation (SF) up to z ∼ 4. Far-ultraviolet (FUV) and infrared (IR) star formation rates (SFRs) are described as conditional probability functions of M _*. We convolve them with the galaxy stellar mass function (GSMF) of SFGs to derive the FUV and IR luminosity functions (LFs). The two SF modes formalism is used to describe starburst galaxies. By fitting observed FUV and IR LFs, the parameterization of SFR_FUV−M _* and SFR_IR− M _* is constrained. Our derived SFR_FUV+IR−M _* reproduces the evolution of the MS as compared to other observational inferences. At any redshift, we find that the sSFR_FUV+IR–M _* relation for MS SFGs approaches a power law at the high-mass end. At lower masses, it bends, and eventually, the slope sign changes from negative to positive at very low masses. At z ∼ 0, this change of sign is at M _* ∼ 5 × 10⁸ M _⊙, close to the dust-obscured SF regime, M _* ∼ 6 × 10⁸ M _⊙. The slope sign change is related to the knee of the FUV LF. Our derived dust-obscured fractions agree with previous determinations at 0 ≤ z ≤ 2.5. Dust-obscured fractions depend strongly on mass with almost no dependence on redshift at z ≳ 1.2. At z ≲ 0.75, high-mass galaxies become more “transparent” compared to their high-redshift counterparts. On the other hand, low- and intermediate-mass galaxies have become more obscured by dust. The joint evolution of the GSMF and the FUV and IR LFs is a promising approach to study mass growth and dust formation/destruction mechanisms.

We combine observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array and the NOrthern Extended Millimeter Array to assess the redshift and to study the star formation conditions in AzTEC2, one of the brightest submillimeter galaxies (SMGs) in the COSMOS field ( mJy). Our high-resolution observations confirm that AzTEC2 splits into two components (namely AzTEC2-A and AzTEC2-B) for which we detect [C ii] and ¹²CO(5 → 4) line emission, implying a redshift of 4.626 ± 0.001 (4.633 ± 0.001) for AzTEC2-A (AzTEC2-B) and ruling out previous associations with a galaxy at . We use the ¹²CO(5 → 4) line emission and adopt typical SMG-like gas excitation conditions to estimate the molecular gas mass, which is for AzTEC2-A, and a factor four lower for AzTEC2-B. With the infrared-derived star formation rate of AzTEC2-A ( yr⁻¹) and AzTEC2-B ( yr⁻¹), they both will consume their current gas reservoir within (30–200) Myr. We find evidence of a rotation-dominated [C ii] disk in AzTEC2-A, with a deprojected rotational velocity of km s⁻¹, velocity dispersion km s⁻¹, and dynamical mass of . We propose that an elevated gas accretion rate from the cosmic web might be the main driver of the intense levels of star formation in AzTEC2-A, which might be further enhanced by gravitational torques induced by its minor companion (AzTEC2-B). These results strengthen the picture whereby the population of single-dish selected SMGs is rather heterogeneous, including a population of pairs of massive, highly active galaxies in a pre-coalescence phase.