We map for the first time the two-dimensional H 2 excitation of warm intergalactic gas in Stephanʼs Quintet on group-wide (50×35 kpc 2 ) scales to quantify the temperature, mass, and warm H 2 mass fraction as a function of position using Spitzer. Molecular gas temperatures are seen to rise (to T > 700 K) and the slope of the power-law density-temperature relation flattens along the main ridge of the filament, defining the region of maximum heating. We also performed MHD modeling of the excitation properties of the warm gas, to map the velocity structure and energy deposition rate of slow and fast molecular shocks. Slow magnetic shocks were required to explain the power radiated from the lowest-lying rotational states of H 2 , and strongly support the idea that energy cascades down to small scales and low velocities from the fast collision of NGC 7318b with group-wide gas. The highest levels of heating of the warm H 2 are strongly correlated with the large-scale stirring of the medium as measured by [C II] spectroscopy with Herschel. H 2 is also seen associated with a separate bridge that extends toward the Seyfert nucleus in NGC 7319, from both Spitzer and CARMA CO observations. This opens up the possibility that both galaxy collisions and outflows from active galactic nuclei can turbulently heat gas on large scales in compact groups. The observations provide a laboratory for studying the effects of turbulent energy dissipation on groupwide scales, which may provide clues about the heating and cooling of gas at high z in early galaxy and protogalaxy formation.

The traditional picture of post-starburst galaxies as dust-and gas-poor merger remnants, rapidly transitioning to quiescence, has been recently challenged. Unexpected detections of a significant ISM in many post-starbursts raise important questions. Are they truly quiescent and, if so, what mechanisms inhibit further star formation? What processes dominate their ISM energetics? We present an infrared spectroscopic and photometric survey of 33 SDSS-selected E+A post-starbursts, aimed at resolving these questions. We find compact, warm dust reservoirs with high PAH abundances, and total gas and dust masses significantly higher than expected from stellar recycling alone. Both PAH/TIR and dustto-burst stellar mass ratios are seen to decrease with post-burst age, indicative of the accumulating effects of dust destruction and an incipient transition to hot, early-type ISM properties. Their infrared spectral properties are unique, with dominant PAH emission, very weak nebular lines, unusually strong H 2 rotational emission, and deep [C ii] deficits. There is substantial scatter among SFR indicators, and both PAH and TIR luminosities provide overestimates. Even as potential upper limits, all tracers show that the SFR has typically experienced a more than two order-of-magnitude decline since the starburst, and that the SFR is considerably lower than expected given both their stellar masses and molecular gas densities. These results paint a coherent picture of systems in which star formation was, indeed, rapidly truncated, but in which the ISM was not completely expelled, and is instead supported against collapse by latent or continued injection of turbulent or mechanical heating. The resulting aging burst populations provide a "high-soft" radiation field which seemingly dominates the E+As' unusual ISM energetics.

Robust knowledge of molecular gas mass is critical for understanding star formation in galaxies. The H 2 molecule does not emit efficiently in the cold interstellar medium, hence the molecular gas content of galaxies is typically inferred using indirect tracers. At low metallicity and in other extreme environments, these tracers can be subject to substantial biases. We present a new method of estimating total molecular gas mass in galaxies directly from pure mid-infrared rotational H 2 emission. By assuming a power-law distribution of H 2 rotational temperatures, we can accurately model H 2 excitation and reliably obtain warm (T100 K) H 2 gas masses by varying only the power law's slope. With sensitivities typical of Spitzer/IRS, we are able to directly probe the H 2 content via rotational emission down to ∼80 K, accounting for ∼15% of the total molecular gas mass in a galaxy. By extrapolating the fitted power-law temperature distributions to a calibrated single lower cutoff temperature, the model also recovers the total molecular content within a factor of ∼2.2 in a diverse sample of galaxies, and a subset of broken powerlaw models performs similarly well. In ULIRGs, the fraction of warm H 2 gas rises with dust temperature, with some dependency on α CO . In a sample of five low-metallicity galaxies ranging down to [ ] + = 12 log O H 7.8, the model yields molecular masses up to ∼100×larger than implied by CO, in good agreement with other methods based on dust mass and star formation depletion timescale. This technique offers real promise for assessing molecular content in the early universe where CO and dust-based methods may fail.

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The impact of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) on star formation has implications for our understanding of the relationships between supermassive black holes and their galaxies, as well as for the growth of galaxies over the history of the Universe. We report on a high-resolution multi-phase study of the nuclear environment in the nearby Seyfert galaxy NGC 2110 using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, and the Very Large Telescope/SINFONI. We identify a region that is markedly weak in low-excitation CO 2 → 1 emission from cold molecular gas, but appears to be filled with ionised and warm molecular gas, which indicates that the AGN is directly influencing the properties of the molecular material. Using multiple molecular gas tracers, we demonstrate that, despite the lack of CO line emission, the surface densities and kinematics of molecular gas vary smoothly across the region. Our results demonstrate that the influence of an AGN on star-forming gas can be quite localized. In contrast to widely-held theoretical expectations, we find that molecular gas remains resilient to the glare of energetic AGN feedback.

We detect widespread [C II] 157.7 µm emission from the inner 5 kpc of the active galaxy NGC 4258 with the SOFIA integral field spectrometer FIFI-LS. The emission is found associated with warm H 2 , distributed along and beyond the end of southern jet, in a zone known to contain shock-excited optical filaments. It is also associated with soft X-ray hot-spots, which are the counterparts of the "anomalous radio arms" of NGC 4258, and a 1 kpc-long filament on the minor axis of the galaxy which contains young star clusters. Palomar-CWI Hα integral field spectroscopy shows that the filament exhibits non-circular motions within NGC 4258. Many of the [C II] profiles are very broad, with the highest line width, 455 km s −1 , observed at the position of the southern jet bow-shock. Abnormally high ratios of L([C II])/L(FIR) and L([C II])/L(PAH7.7 µm) are found along and beyond the southern jet and in the X-ray hotspots. These are the same regions that exhibit unusually large intrinsic [C II] line widths. This suggests that the [C II] traces warm molecular gas in shocks and turbulence associated with the jet. We estimate that as much as 40% (3.8 × 10 39 erg s −1 ) of the total [C II] luminosity from the inner 5 kpc of NGC 4258 arises in shocks and turbulence (< 1% bolometric luminosity from the active nucleus), the rest being consistent with [C II] excitation associated with star formation. We propose that the highly-inclined jet is colliding with, and being deflected around, dense irregularities in a thick disk, leading to significant energy dissipation over a wide area of the galaxy.

We present James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) integral-field spectroscopy of the nearby merging, luminous infrared galaxy, NGC 7469. This galaxy hosts a Seyfert type-1.5 nucleus, a highly ionized outflow, and a bright, circumnuclear star-forming ring, making it an ideal target to study active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback in the local universe. We take advantage of the high spatial/spectral resolution of JWST/MIRI to isolate the star-forming regions surrounding the central active nucleus and study the properties of the dust and warm molecular gas on ∼100 pc scales. The starburst ring exhibits prominent polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) emission, with grain sizes and ionization states varying by only ∼30%, and a total star formation rate of 10–30 M ⊙ yr−1 derived from fine structure and recombination emission lines. Using pure rotational lines of H2 we detect 1.2 × 107 M ⊙ of warm molecular gas at a temperature higher than 200 K in the ring. All PAH bands get significantly weaker toward the central source, where larger and possibly more ionized grains dominate the emission, likely the result of the ionizing radiation and/or the fast wind emerging from the AGN. The small grains and warm molecular gas in the bright regions of the ring however display properties consistent with normal star-forming regions. These observations highlight the power of JWST to probe the inner regions of dusty, rapidly evolving galaxies for signatures of feedback and inform models that seek to explain the coevolution of supermassive black holes and their hosts.

We present an analysis of archival ISO observations of H 2 for three 14 ×20 pointings in the central 3 parsecs of the Galaxy: toward the Southwest region and Northeast region of the Galactic center Circumnuclear Disk, and toward the supermassive black hole Sgr A*. We detect pure rotational lines from 0-0 S(0) to S(13), as well as a number of rovibrationally excited transitions. Using the pure rotational lines, we perform both fits to a discrete temperature distribution (measuring up to three temperature components with T= 500-600 K, T= 1250-1350 K, and T >2600 K) and fits to a continuous temperature distribution, assuming a power-law distribution of temperatures. We measure power law indices of n = 3.22 for the Northeast region and n = 2.83 for the Southwest region. These indices are lower than those measured for other galaxies or other Galactic center clouds, indicating a larger fraction of gas at high temperatures. We also test whether extrapolating this temperature distribution can yields a reasonable estimate of the total molecular mass, as has been recently done for H 2 observations in other galaxies. Extrapolating to a cutoff temperature of 50 K in the Southwest (Northeast) region, we would measure 32 (140) % of the total molecular gas mass inferred from the dust emission, and 26 (125) % of the total molecular gas mass inferred from the CO emission. Ultimately, the inconsistency of the masses inferred in this way suggest that a simple application of this method cannot yield a reliable estimate of the mass of the Circumnuclear Disk.