Blown Away: Colliding Galaxies Trigger Starbursts and Monster Black Holes

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The European Space Agency (ESA) Herschel Space Observatory, home to the largest single mirror telescope in space, has detected massive amounts of molecular gas gusting at high velocities – in some cases in excess of 1000 kilometers per second – from the centers of a sample of merging galaxies. Herschel was built by a European-led, multi-national team, including U.S. contributions from researchers at NASA’s JPL, Caltech, and the Naval Research Laboratory. It opens a new terahertz window on the cold and dusty Universe, enabling its scientific objective: to investigate how planets, stars, and galaxies formed and continue to evolve.

Illustration of a galaxy exhibiting massive gas outflows. This illustration shows an Ultra-Luminous InfraRed Galaxy (ULIRG) that exhibits massive outflows of molecular gas.

Credit: ESA/AOES Medialab

In one of the most widely accepted theories of galaxy evolution, ULIRGs are an intermediate stage in the merger-driven process that gives rise to elliptical galaxies. Within this framework, the merger of gas-rich spiral galaxies hosting supermassive black holes in their centres initially produces a galaxy with an active nucleus that is enshrouded by a mixture of gas and dust. In this phase, the object is completely obscured and can only be detected in infrared light as an ULIRG. As the system evolves, gas and dust are gradually dispersed, eventually giving rise to an exposed Active Galactic Nucleus – a quasar.

Initially, it is the merger process that triggers starbursts and the growth of the central supermassive black hole in the galaxy. Later, the starburst and accretion by the black hole generate powerful gas outflows that sweep away the galaxy’s reservoir of gas. Due to these negative feedback mechanisms, star formation is suppressed, and the galaxy that forms from the merger is gas-poor and populated by old stellar populations, as is observed in elliptical galaxies.

The detection of outflows powerful enough to strip galaxies of their molecular gas reservoir represents solid evidence in support of the merger-driven scenario for the formation of elliptical galaxies.

Driven by star formation and central black holes, these powerful storms are strong enough to sweep away billions of solar masses of molecular gas and to interfere with global galactic processes. The Herschel observations indicate that, in the galaxies hosting the brightest Active Galactic Nuclei, outflows can clear the entire supply for creating stars and feeding the black hole. This finding provides long-sought-after evidence of highly energetic feedback processes taking place in galaxies as they evolve. The discoveries are reported in papers in the journals Astronomy & Astrophysics (volume 518, L41, 2010) and Astrophysical Journal Letters (volume 773, L16, 2011).

Together with an international team of investigators, Drs. Eckhard Sturm of the Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik (MPE) in Germany and Jacqueline Fischer of the NRL Remote Sensing Division, the Herschel Optical System Scientist, obtained terahertz spectroscopic observations in order to trace the evolution of merging gas-rich galaxies. The team observed a number of these mergers, which, because they are enshrouded in gas and dust therefore are very luminous in the infrared, are also known as Ultra-Luminous InfraRed Galaxies (ULIRGs). The mergers were observed with the spectrometer of Herschel’s PACS instrument, built by a team led by Dr. Albrecht Poglitsch (MPE), as part of the Survey with Herschel of the ISM in Nearby INfrared Galaxies (SHINING), headed by Dr. Sturm.

Massive outflows of gas from galactic centers are tell-tale signs that powerful, storm-like processes affecting the global galactic balance of mass and energy are underway. Within a galaxy, these storms can be generated in the regions of active star formation, stirred by stellar winds and shock waves from supernova explosions. They can also be triggered close to the central black hole, where radiation pressure from the accretion disc drives the surrounding gas away.

When powerful enough, outflows can sweep away the galaxy’s entire reservoir of gas, depleting it of the raw material that creates stars and feeds the central black hole. This inhibits further star formation episodes and additional black hole growth. Thus, galactic outflows cause negative feedback, halting the same mechanisms that produced them in the first place.

Powerful outflows are key features in models of galactic formation and evolution, but while there have been other detections of galactic outflows, almost all previous observations dealt only with neutral and ionized gas. The Herschel discovery is unique in that, for the first time, the outflows were detected in the cool molecular gas from which stars are born, allowing their direct impact on star formation to be studied.

Detecting molecular gas outflows in galaxies

This illustration shows how outflows of molecular gas can be detected in the spectra of galaxies.The outflows are traced via the spectral lines of the hydroxyl molecule (OH) that exhibit a distinctive blue- and red-shifted profile due to the geometry of the system

Credit: ESA/AOES Medialab

As the gas flows out from the galactic centre in virtually all directions, to a distant observer some gas clouds will appear to be approaching and others receding, while the clouds moving perpendicularly to the observer’s line of sight will exhibit no apparent motion along the direction of the line of sight.

Light originating from the bright disc of accreting material around the black hole is absorbed by OH present in the clouds along the line of sight to the observer and, as these clouds are moving towards the observer, the resulting absorption lines are blue-shifted. Clouds that are off this line of sight give rise to OH emission only: among these clouds, those that are moving away from the observer will give rise to red-shifted emission lines.

The composite shape of the spectrum depicted here – obtained with measurements from the Herschel Space Observatory – is due to the fact that neither the central source nor the individual clouds can be spatially resolved by Herschel, and photons coming from the various components all fall on one single pixel.

Elliptical galaxies are thought to arise from the merger of gas-rich spiral galaxies, a process in which ULIRGs represent an intermediate stage. Gas outflows develop naturally within this scenario, and they are crucial to explaining some observed characteristics of elliptical galaxies. Elliptical galaxies contain old stellar populations, relatively small amounts of gas and almost no sign of ongoing star formation. This is in contrast with spiral galaxies, which are dominated by young stars and are rich in gas necessary for intense star formation. For elliptical galaxies to derive from spiral galaxies, something must drain the cold gas and halt the production of stars, and outflows such as those observed by Herschel appear as ideal candidates for the job.

Another property that finds a natural explanation in galactic outflows is the strong correlation observed between the mass of black holes and the stellar mass of the spheroidal component of the galaxies hosting them: black holes that are relatively more massive appear to reside in galaxies with spheroids that contain more stars. This empirical relation suggests that black hole growth and star formation are intertwined, both initially drawing from the gas reservoir, and creating feedback mechanisms such as outflows that eventually suppress them.

Herschel’s sensitivity and spectral resolution enabled detection of the Doppler shifted signatures of these gigantic galactic storms, and demonstration for the first time, that they may be strong enough to shut down stellar production entirely. The outflows were traced via spectral lines of the hydroxyl molecule (OH). The excellent spectral resolution of PACS allowed astronomers to clearly identify the characteristic blue- and red-shifted profile caused by the system geometry. With velocities of 1000 kilometers per second and higher, the outflows are able to strip galaxies of gas amounting to several hundred solar masses every year.

The data set suggests that slower outflows may be initiated by star formation regions, whereas those with higher velocity appear to be related to the activity of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) powered by central black holes: brighter AGN seem to sweep gas away faster than their less luminous counterparts. However, it will be necessary to analyse a larger sample of galaxies in order to verify this claim that the measured velocity can be used as an indicator of the main mechanism driving the outflow.

Although observations of a larger sample is being collected, the early Herschel observations indicate that the galaxies hosting the strongest signatures of AGN are releasing gas at a much higher pace than their star formation rates, and thus they appear able to provide the mechanism needed exhaust their reservoirs of star-forming gas, as is necessary if they are to evolve into gas-poor elliptical galaxies. In the mergers observed to be undergoing strong feedback, star formation is estimated to cease on timescales shorter than 10 million years. This will produce galaxies with characteristics that match those observed in ellipticals: poor in cold gas and populated by old stars.

By catching molecular outflows ‘in the act,’ Herschel has yielded long-sought-after evidence that powerful processes with negative feedback do take place in galaxies and dramatically affect their evolution.

Herschel is an ESA space observatory with science instruments provided by European-led Principal Investigator consortia and with important participation from NASA. NASA’s Herschel Project Office is based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel’s three science instruments. The NASA Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, provides support for the U.S. astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. Basic research in infrared astronomy is funded by the US Office of Naval Research.

PACS has been developed by a consortium of institutes led by MPE (Germany) and including UVIE (Austria); KU Leuven, CSL, IMEC (Belgium); CEA, LAM (France); MPIA (Germany); INAF-IFSI/OAA/OAP/OAT, LENS, SISSA (Italy); IAC (Spain). This development has been supported by the funding agencies BMVIT (Austria), ESA-PRODEX (Belgium), CEA/CNES (France), DLR (Germany), ASI/INAF (Italy), and CICYT/MCYT (Spain).

Source: U.S. Naval Research Laboratory

Related Links:
Main Herschel link: http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/area/index.cfm?fareaid=16
Simulation movie of galaxy mergers: http://web.phys.cmu.edu/~tiziana/BHGrow/
The SHINING Key Program: http://www.mpe.mpg.de/ir/Research/SHINING/index.php
More on Herschel Key Programs: http://herschel.esac.esa.int/Key_Programmes.shtml