An official website of the United States government
ABSTRACT Radiative cooling and active galactic nucleus heating are thought to form a feedback loop that regulates the evolution of low-redshift cool-core galaxy clusters. Numerical simulations suggest that the formation of multiphase gas in the cluster core imposes a floor on the ratio of cooling time (tcool) to free-fall time (tff) at min(tcool/tff) ≈ 10. Observations of galaxy clusters show evidence for such a floor, and usually the cluster cores with min(tcool/tff) ≲ 30 contain abundant multiphase gas. However, there are important outliers. One of them is Abell 2029 (A2029), a massive galaxy cluster (M200 ≳ 1015 M⊙) with min(tcool/tff) ∼ 20, but little apparent multiphase gas. In this paper, we present high-resolution 3D hydrodynamic adaptive mesh refinement simulations of a cluster similar to A2029 and study how it evolves over a period of 1–2 Gyr. Those simulations suggest that A2029 self-regulates without producing multiphase gas because the mass of its central black hole ($${\sim} 5 \times 10^{10} \, \mathrm{ M}_\odot$$) is great enough for Bondi accretion of hot ambient gas to produce enough feedback energy to compensate for radiative cooling.
more »
« less
This content will become publicly available on July 14, 2027
JWST Reveals How Black Holes are Fed: Kiloparsec-scale Multiphase Filaments Feed Subkiloparsec Circumnuclear Disks
Abstract The Centaurus cluster is one of the most important archetypes of radio-mode active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback, with its central galaxy, NGC 4696, launching powerful jets that inflate X-ray cavities and regulate cooling and star formation. NGC 4696 lies within a spectacular multiphase nebula of filaments extending over tens of kiloparsecs and spanning 6 decades in temperature, from hot (108 K) X-ray-emitting plasma to cold molecular gas. Owing to its proximity, Hubble Space Telescope Hαimaging reveals a striking S-shaped ionized-gas swirl within the black hole’s sphere of influence—the first such structure identified in a cluster core. Here we present the first JWST observations of NGC 4696 with NIRSpec, probing the inner 618 × 618 pc at 10 pc resolution. These data reveal that the ionized swirl is a rotating, multiphase circumnuclear disk (CND) physically and kinematically connected to the larger-scale filamentary network. This provides the long-sought missing link between kiloparsec-scale cooling flows and black hole accretion on <100 pc scales. Strikingly, the observed morphology and kinematics are reproduced by tailored magnetohydrodynamic simulations, in which filamentary gas condenses from the hot atmosphere, loses angular momentum, and feeds a rotating CND that mediates accretion onto the black hole. A similar structure in NGC 1275, the Perseus cluster’s central galaxy, together with our results on NGC 4696—two prototypical radio-mode AGN feedback systems—points to a common mechanism: multiphase filaments transport gas from cluster scales down to the vicinity of the black hole via a CND, closing the AGN feedback loop and establishing a physically grounded framework for self-regulated galaxy evolution.
more »
« less
- PAR ID:
- 10705360
- Author(s) / Creator(s):
- ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; more »
- Publisher / Repository:
- ApJ Letters
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Astrophysical Journal Letters
- Volume:
- 1006
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2041-8205
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- L9
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
null (Ed.)ABSTRACT We examine the 1.4 GHz radio luminosities of galaxies arising from star formation and active galactic nuclei (AGNs) within the state-of-the-art cosmological hydrodynamic simulation Simba. Simba grows black holes via gravitational torque limited accretion from cold gas and Bondi accretion from hot gas, and employs AGN feedback including jets at low Eddington ratios. We define a population of radio loud AGNs (RLAGNs) based on the presence of ongoing jet feedback. Within RLAGN, we define high and low excitation radio galaxies (HERGs and LERGs) based on their dominant mode of black hole accretion: torque limited accretion representing feeding from a cold disc, or Bondi representing advection-dominated accretion from a hot medium. Simba predicts good agreement with the observed radio luminosity function (RLF) and its evolution, overall as well as separately for HERGs and LERGs. Quiescent galaxies with AGN-dominated radio flux dominate the RLF at $$\gtrsim 10^{22-23}$$ W Hz−1, while star formation dominates at lower radio powers. Overall, RLAGNs have higher black hole accretion rates and lower star formation rates than non-RLAGN at a given stellar mass or velocity dispersion, but have similar black hole masses. Simba predicts an LERG number density of 8.53 Mpc−3, ∼10× higher than for HERGs, broadly as observed. While LERGs dominate among most massive galaxies with the largest black holes and HERGs dominate at high specific star formation rates, they otherwise largely populate similar-sized dark matter haloes and have similar host galaxy properties. Simba thus predicts that deeper radio surveys will reveal an increasing overlap between the host galaxy demographics of HERGs and LERGs.more » « less
-
ABSTRACT The processes responsible for the assembly of cold and warm gas in early-type galaxies (ETGs) are not well understood. We report on the multiwavelength properties of 15 non-central, nearby (z ≤ 0.008 89) ETGs primarily through Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) and Chandra X-ray observations, to address the origin of their multiphase gas. The MUSE data reveal that 8/15 sources contain warm ionized gas traced by the H α emission line. The morphology of this gas is found to be filamentary in 3/8 sources: NGC 1266, NGC 4374, and NGC 4684, which is similar to that observed in many group and cluster-centred galaxies. All H α filamentary sources have X-ray luminosities exceeding the expected emission from the stellar population, suggesting the presence of diffuse hot gas, which likely cooled to form the cooler phases. The morphologies of the remaining 5/8 sources are rotating gas discs, not as commonly observed in higher mass systems. Chandra X-ray observations (when available) of the ETGs with rotating H α discs indicate that they are nearly void of hot gas. A mixture of stellar mass-loss and external accretion was likely the dominant channel for the cool gas in NGC 4526 and NGC 4710. These ETGs show full kinematic alignment between their stars and gas, and are fast rotators. The H α features within NGC 4191 (clumpy, potentially star-forming ring), NGC 4643, and NGC 5507 (extended structures) along with loosely overlapping stellar and gas populations allow us to attribute external accretion to be the primary formation channel of their cool gas.more » « less
-
Context. The host galaxy conditions for rapid supermassive black hole growth are poorly understood. Narrow-line Seyfert 1 (NLS1) galaxies often exhibit high accretion rates and are hypothesized to be prototypes of active galactic nuclei (AGN) at an early stage of their evolution. Aims. We present adaptive optics (AO) assisted VLT MUSE NFM observations of Mrk 1044, the nearest super-Eddington accreting NLS1. Together with archival MUSE WFM data, we aim to understand the host galaxy processes that drive Mrk 1044’s black hole accretion. Methods. We extracted the faint stellar continuum emission from the AGN-deblended host and performed spatially resolved emission line diagnostics with an unprecedented resolution. Combining both MUSE WFM and NFM-AO observations, we used a kinematic model of a thin rotating disk to trace the stellar and ionized gas motion from 10 kpc galaxy scales down to ∼30 pc around the nucleus. Results. Mrk 1044’s stellar kinematics follow circular rotation, whereas the ionized gas shows tenuous spiral features in the center. We resolve a compact star-forming circumnuclear ellipse (CNE) that has a semi-minor axis of 306 pc. Within this CNE, the gas is metal-rich and its line ratios are entirely consistent with excitation by star formation. With an integrated star formation rate of 0.19 ± 0.05 M ⊙ yr −1 , the CNE contributes 27% of the galaxy-wide star formation. Conclusions. We conclude that Mrk 1044’s nuclear activity has not yet affected the circumnuclear star formation. Thus, Mrk 1044 is consistent with the idea that NLS1s are young AGN. A simple mass budget consideration suggests that the circumnuclear star formation and AGN phase are connected and the patterns in the ionized gas velocity field are a signature of the ongoing AGN feeding.more » « less
-
Abstract We investigate the cold and warm gas content, kinematics, and spatial distribution of six local massive elliptical galaxies to probe the origin of the multiphase gas in their atmospheres. We report new observations, including Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy [C ii ], Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array CO, Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) H α +[N ii ], and Very Large Array (VLA) radio observations. These are complemented by a large suite of multiwavelength archival data sets, including thermodynamical properties of the hot gas and radio jets, which are leveraged to investigate the role of active galactic nucleus (AGN) feeding/feedback in regulating the multiphase gas content. Our galactic sample shows a significant diversity in cool gas content, spanning filamentary and rotating structures. In our noncentral galaxies, the distribution of such gas is often concentrated, at variance with the more extended features observed in central galaxies. Misalignment between the multiphase gas and stars suggest that stellar mass loss is not the primary driver. A fraction of the cool gas might be acquired via galaxy interactions, but we do not find quantitative evidence of mergers in most of our systems. Instead, key evidence supports the origin via condensation out of the diffuse halo. Comparing with chaotic cold accretion (CCA) simulations, we find that our cool gas-free galaxies are likely in the overheated phase of the self-regulated AGN cycle, while for our galaxies with cool gas, the k-plot and AGN power correlation corroborate the phase of CCA feeding in which the condensation rain is triggering more vigorous AGN heating. The related C-ratio further shows that central/noncentral galaxies are expected to generate an extended/inner rain, consistent with our sample.more » « less
