Jet-induced star formation in gas-rich galaxies

By Volker Gaibler, S. Khochfar, M. Krause, J. Silk. 2011

196 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN) has become a major component in simulations of galaxy evolution, in particular for massive galaxies. AGN jets have been shown to provide a large amount of energy and are capable of quenching cooling flows. Their impact on the host galaxy, however, is still not understood. Subgrid models of AGN activity in a galaxy evolution context so far have been mostly focused on the quenching of star formation. To shed more light on the actual physics of the ‘radio mode' part of AGN activity, we have performed simulations of the interaction of a powerful AGN jet with the massive gaseous disc () of a high-redshift galaxy. We spatially resolve both the jet and the clumpy, multi-phase interstellar medium (ISM) and include an explicit star formation model in the simulation. Following the system over more than 107 yr, we find that the jet activity excavates the central region, but overall causes a significant change to the shape of the density probability distribution function and hence the star formation rate due to the formation of a blast wave with strong compression and cooling in the ISM. This results in a ring- or disc-shaped population of young stars. At later times, the increase in star formation rate also occurs in the disc regions further out since the jet cocoon pressurizes the ISM. The total mass of the additionally formed stars may be up to for one duty cycle. We discuss the details of this jet-induced star formation (positive feedback) and its potential consequences for galaxy evolution and observable signatures.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4a843f2d6347dba6515c008a56afff2df55deee3

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Citations in the corpus

Relativistic jet feedback – III. Feedback on gas discs (2018, background): “…rate has been widely used to estimate the star formation rate in computational simulations of galaxy evolution (Springel & Hernquist 2003; Dubois & Teyssier 2008) and also in recent studies of positive feedback (such as Gaibler et al. 2012; Bieri et al. 2015; Dugan et al. 2017; Bieri et al. 2016).”
DRIVING OUTFLOWS WITH RELATIVISTIC JETS AND THE DEPENDENCE OF ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS FEEDBACK EFFICIENCY ON INTERSTELLAR MEDIUM INHOMOGENEITY (2012, methodology): “The simulations by Sutherland & Bicknell (2007) and Gaibler et al. (2012) show that, if the molecular gas is distributed as a large coherent complex in a disk-like geometry, the coupling between jet and ISM in terms of negative feedback through gas expulsion is weak.”
THE COSMOS2015 CATALOG: EXPLORING THE 1 < z < 6 UNIVERSE WITH HALF A MILLION GALAXIES (2016, background): “…other halo-mass-dependent effects play a non-negligible, if not crucial, role in regulating star formation, especially feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGNs), either in a negative sense (e.g. Croton et al. 2006; Hopkins et al. 2006) or a positive (e.g. Gaibler et al. 2012; Bieri et al. 2015).”
UNLEASHING POSITIVE FEEDBACK: LINKING THE RATES OF STAR FORMATION, SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE ACCRETION, AND OUTFLOWS IN DISTANT GALAXIES (2013, methodology): “…simulations that are capable of resolving the Kelvin–Helmholtz instabilities that control the interaction of the AGN outflows with interstellar clouds, I use jet-driven outflows (Wagner et al. 2012) and jet-triggered star formation (Gaibler et al. 2012) as my canonical case in what follows.”
Gamma-ray spectroscopy of Positron Annihilation in the Milky Way (2015, background): “Jet dynamics would create a backflow in the lobes, which would drive the putative positrons back towards the Milky Way’s disk (Gaibler et al. 2011, 2012) where they would diffuse into the denser gas, annihilating as they are slowed down.”
Cool outflows in galaxies and their implications (2020, background): “ings support several recent models of jet/outflow-induced star formation (Mukherjee et al. 2018a; Gaibler et al. 2012; Silk 2013; Bieri et al. 2015, 2016; Dugan et al. 2017; Nayakshin and Zubovas 2012; Silk 2017), as well as older models predating all of these observations (e.”
Relativistic jet feedback in high-redshift galaxies – I. Dynamics (2016, background): “However, only a few theoretical papers (Sutherland & Bicknell 2007; Gaibler, Khochfar & Krause 2011; Wagner & Bicknell 2011b; Gaibler et al. 2012; Wagner, Bicknell & Umemura 2012) have addressed the question of how a relativistic jet interacts with a multiphase ISM of the host galaxy, and over what…”
Simulating galaxy formation with black hole driven thermal and kinetic feedback (2016, background): “…al. 2015, 2016; Curtis & Sijacki 2015, 2016; Emsellem et al. 2015; Rosas-Guevara et al. 2015) and the AGN-gas interaction (Huarte-Espinosa et al. 2011; Gaibler et al. 2012; Cielo et al. 2014; Costa et al. 2014; Roos et al. 2015; Bieri et al. 2016; Hopkins et al. 2016) are poorly understood, which…”