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OATS-UNI/TS SEMINAR
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Speaker: Emanuele Paolo Farina (Insubria Univ.)

Title: Two is better than one: unveiling the environment of quasars with pairs and triplets.
Date: Wednesday, May 15th, 2013
Time: 11:30
Venue: Villa Bazzoni
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Abstract: The standard model on the origin of quasar high luminosity requires an intense gas accretion on a super massive black hole that dramatically increases its activity. Feasible mechanisms responsible for the gas in fall are instabilities caused by strong gravitational interactions and galaxy mergers. The close (few hundreds kiloparsecs) environment of quasars is thus expected to be populated by tidal debris, streams, and diffuse cool gas clouds, as commonly observed in interacting galaxies. Given their low surface brightness, most of the properties of these features could be investigated almost exclusively in absorption, especially at high redshift. I will take advantage of the rare case of quasar pairs and triplets to shed light on the large scale properties of quasar host galaxies, to unveil the reservoir of cool enriched gas that surround quasars, and to probe well known joint evolution of super massive black holes and their host galaxies. Since the hosts of high redshift quasars are expected to evolve massive and luminous red elliptical galaxies at z~0, these information are essential to constrain the initial conditions for the galaxy formation and evolution.
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Contact: Valentina Presotto (OATS)