Ionized and hot molecular outflows in the inner 500 pc of NGC1275

Abstract

The role of feedback from Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) in the evolution of galaxies is still not not fully understood, mostly due to the lack of observational constraints in the multi-phase gas kinematics on the ten to hundred parsec scales. We have used the Gemini Near-infrared Integral Field Spectrograph (NIFS) to map the molecular and ionized gas kinematics in the inner 900×900 pc 2 of the Seyfert galaxy NGC 1275 at a spatial resolution of ∼70 pc. From the fitting of the CO absorption bandheads in the K-band, we derive a stellar velocity dispersion of 265 ± 26 km s −1 , which implies a black hole mass of M SMBH = 1.1 +0.9 −0.5 × 10 9 M . We find hot (T 1000 K) molecular and ionized outflows with velocities of up to 2 000 km s −1 and mass outflow rates of 2.7 × 10 −2 M yr −1 and 1.6 M yr −1 , respectively, in each of these gas phases. The kinetic power of the ionized outflows corresponds to only 0.05 per cent of the luminosity of the AGN of NGC 1275, indicating that they are not powerful enough to provide significant AGN feedback, but may be effective in redistributing the gas in the central region of the galaxy. The AGN driven outflows seem to be responsible for the shocks necessary to produce the observed H 2 and [Fe ii] line emission.

Probing the circumnuclear environment of NGC 1275 with high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy

“…Nagai et al (2019) discover HCN(3-2) and HCO + (3-2) absorption against the radio continuum of the central pc-scale jet emission blueshifted by 300-600 km s −1 , suggesting a fast molecular outflow from the AGN with an estimated H 2 column density of 𝑁 𝐻 2 ≈ 2.3 × 10 22 cm −2 . The existence of a fast molecular outflow on 𝑅 ∼ 100 pc scales has been strengthened recently by new Gemini NIFS data that find a high velocity-dispersion component to the H 2 line which extends across the 3 × 3 field of view of NIFS (Riffel et al 2020).…”