Collaborative Research: A Systematic and Comprehensive Study of Black Hole-Driven Turbulence in Massive Galactic Systems

In order to prevent the immediate conversion of a galaxy’s total gas supply into stars, a feedback mechanism must exist to slow down star formation. One promising candidate is the injection of turbulence into a galaxy’s supply of gas by a super-massive black hole. This research team has developed a technique to measure gas turbulence in systems hosting giant central black holes and will directly evaluate the viability of this mechanism using a large sample of galaxies.

The team will work with artists/graphic designers to integrate their work into a series of freely available planetarium shows, mentor under-represented groups in STEM research, support a postdoc and a graduate student, and introduce undergraduates to astronomical research. This project is jointly funded by MPS/AST and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).

This project will deliver a more complete view of the “feedback” provided by accreting SMBHs, leading to a better understanding of the black hole-host galaxy relation. More specifically, it will directly probe the energetics of the intra-cluster, circum-galactic, and interstellar media of massive early-type galaxies. The origin of turbulence, the coupling between hot and cold gas, and the microscopic physics will be revealed through the gas kinematics of these systems at different mass scales using X-ray (Chandra), visible (VLT/MUSE), and sub-millimeter (ALMA) observations.

The innovative technique of studying the velocity structure of multi-phase filaments has the potential to be a more direct and accurate way to probe turbulent gas motion, vis-a-vis X-ray surface brightness fluctuation analysis, resonant scattering analysis, and even the direct X-ray line width measurement with Hitomi. This project will be a pathfinder for the calorimeter-based X-ray observatories of the next generation such as XRISM, Athena-XIFU, and Lynx.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.