An international team of scientists led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) examine the interaction between radio jets and cold gas within the Teacop galaxy, which is a quasar located approximately 1.3 billion light-years from Earth whose central region encompasses approximately 3,300 light-years in size. This study holds the potential to help scientists better understand how such jets affect the composition, evolution, and formation of galaxies.
Observations of a radio jet in the middle of the Teacup galaxy. (Credit: HST/ ALMA/ VLA/ M. Meenakshi/ D. Mukherjee/ A. Audibert)
For the study, the researchers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to observe the cold-dense gas within Teacup with unrivaled detail and detected molecules of carbon monoxide, which can only exist under specific temperature and density conditions. The team concluded that the compact jets with Teacup are both heating the gas and disrupting its distribution within Teacup, along with accelerating the gas in a mysterious manner. Contrary to their initial hypotheses, the researchers discovered Teacup’s cold gas demonstrated both unstable behavior and warmer temperatures in perpendicular directions to the jet’s directional outflow.
“This is caused by the shocks induced by the jet-driven bubble, which heats up and blows the gas in its lateral expansion,” said Dr. Anelise Audibert, an IAC researcher and lead author of the study. “Supported by the comparison with computer simulations, we believe that the orientation between the cold gas disk and the jet is a crucial factor in efficiently driving these lateral winds.”
“It was previously believed that low-power jets had a negligible impact on the galaxy, but works like ours show that, even in the case of radio-quiet galaxies, jets can redistribute and disrupt the surrounding gas, and this will have an impact on the galaxy's ability to form new stars”, said Dr. Cristina Ramos Almeida, an IAC researcher, and a co-author on the study.
Going forward, the team plans to use the MEGARA instrument on the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS to observe radio-quiet quasars, which could help scientists better understand how jets affect the unstable and hot gas, along with measuring variances in star formation caused by this jet phenomena. This study is part of the QSOFEED project, with the overall goal to better understand how winds from supermassive black holes affect their hosting galaxies. for example, the center of our own galaxy features the supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*.
What new discoveries will scientists make about how jets could impact star and galaxy formation and evolution in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
Sources: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (1)
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