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.