paper

Suppressing star formation in quiescent galaxies with supermassive black hole winds

arXiv:1605.07626 · doi:10.1038/nature18006

Abstract

Quiescent galaxies with little or no ongoing star formation dominate the galaxy population above , where their numbers have increased by a factor of since . Once star formation is initially shut down, perhaps during the quasar phase of rapid accretion onto a supermassive black hole, an unknown mechanism must remove or heat subsequently accreted gas from stellar mass loss or mergers that would otherwise cool to form stars. Energy output from a black hole accreting at a low rate has been proposed, but observational evidence for this in the form of expanding hot gas shells is indirect and limited to radio galaxies at the centers of clusters, which are too rare to explain the vast majority of the quiescent population. Here we report bisymmetric emission features co-aligned with strong ionized gas velocity gradients from which we infer the presence of centrally-driven winds in typical quiescent galaxies that host low-luminosity active nuclei. These galaxies are surprisingly common, accounting for as much as of the population at . In a prototypical example, we calculate that the energy input from the galaxy's low-level active nucleus is capable of driving the observed wind, which contains sufficient mechanical energy to heat ambient, cooler gas (also detected) and thereby suppress star formation.

arXiv commentTo be published in Nature on May 26th, 2016

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