The collaborative research team led by the National University and Kapodistian Athena, Greece, has investigated the influence of supermasif black holes on the formation of stars.
Professor Kalliopi Dasyra from the National University and Kapodistian Athena, Greece, led the European research team which included Dr. Thomas Bisbas from the University of Cologne. Scientists model some of the emission lines in the Atray ATACAMA (ALMA) and Observatory Telescope (VLT), to measure gas pressure in the two clouds affected by jet and clouds around.
With an unprecedented measurement collected from this equipment, the researchers found that the jet significantly changed the internal and external pressure of molecular clouds in its path. This means that, depends on which of the two changes that change the most, cloud compression, triggers for stars, cloud discipline, and delays in the formation of stars are possible in the same galaxy.
“Our results show that the supermasi-black hole, although they are located in galaxy centers, can affect the formation of stars in a wide way,” explained Professor Dasyra. “Studying the impact of changes in pressure on cloud stability is the key to the success of this project. After some stars are truly formed in the wind, it is usually very difficult to detect their signals above the signal of all other stars in the galaxy that host the wind. “
This new study was published in Nature Astronomy.
Star formation due to gas condensation
For decades, scientists believe that the supermasi’s black hole is located in the center of most galaxies in our universe. When the particles that befall the black hole are trapped by the magnetic field, they can be removed out and traveling far inside the galaxy in the form of a very large and strong plasma jet. This jet is often perpendicular to the galaxy disk. However, in IC 5063 – Galaxy 156 million Light years – Jets actually propagated in the disk, interacting with cold and solid molecular gas clouds. Theoris of this interaction is that the compression of clouds affected by the jet is possible, which leads to the instability of gravity and finally the formation of stars due to gas condensation.
During the experiment, the team used carbon monoxide emissions (CO) and formal cations (HCO+) provided by Alma, and ionized sulfur emissions and ionized nitrogen provided by VLT. They then use sophisticated and innovative Astrochemical and innovative algorithms to determine environmental conditions in outflow and surrounding media.
This environmental condition contains information about the strength of the radiation of the distant stars, the rate at which particles that are relatively loaded with gas with gas, and mechanical energy deposited on gas by jet. Narrowing this condition reveals the density and temperature of the descriptive gas from various parts of this galaxy, which is then used to put pressure.
We have carried out thousands of Astrochemical simulations to cover various possibilities that might exist in IC 5063,” said colleague of the author Dr. Thomas Bisbas, DFG Fellow of the University of Cologne and a former postdoctoral researcher at the National Observatory of Athena.
Identify as many physical obstacles as possible
The challenging part of this job is carefully identifying as many physical obstacles as possible in the checked range that each parameter can have. “In this way, we can get an optimal combination of cloud physical parameters in various galaxy locations,” said Mr. Georgios Filippos Paraschos, colleagues of the author, PhD students at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, and former Master students at the National University and Athena Kapodistian .
Pressures were not just measured for a few locations in IC 5063. Instead, maps of this and other quantities in the centre of this Galaxy were created. These maps allowed the authors to visualise how the gas properties transition from one location to another because of the jet passage. The team is currently looking forward to the next big step of this project, which is utilising the James Webb Space Telescope for further investigations of the pressure in the outer cloud layers, as probed by the warm H2.