TY - JOUR
T1 - Local positive feedback in the overall negative
T2 - the impact of quasar winds on star formation in the FIRE cosmological simulations
AU - Mercedes-Feliz, Jonathan
AU - Angles-Alcázar, Daniel
AU - Hayward, Christopher C.
AU - Cochrane, Rachel K.
AU - Terrazas, Bryan A.
AU - Wellons, Sarah
AU - Richings, Alexander J.
AU - Faucher-Giguère, Claude Andre
AU - Moreno, Jorge
AU - Su, Kung Yi
AU - Hopkins, Philip F.
AU - Quataert, Eliot
AU - Kereš, Dušan
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the anonymous referee for constructive comments that helped improve the paper. The simulations were run on Flatiron Institute’s research computing facilities (Gordon-Simons, Popeye, and Iron compute clusters), supported by the Simons Foundation. We thank the Scientific Computing Core group at the Flatiron Institute for outstanding support. Additional numerical calculations were run on the Caltech compute cluster ‘Wheeler,’ allocations FTA-Hopkins supported by the NSF and TACC, and NASA HEC SMD-16-7592, and XSEDE allocation TG-AST160048 supported by NSF grant ACI-1053575. JMF was supported in part by a NASA CT Space Grant Graduate Fellowship. DAA acknowledges support by NSF grants AST-2009687 and AST-2108944, CXO grant TM2-23006X, Simons Foundation Award CCA-1018464, and Cottrell Scholar Award CS-CSA-2023-028 by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. SW was supported by an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under award AST2001905. CAFG was supported by NSF through grants AST-1715216, AST-2108230, and CAREER award AST-1652522; by NASA through grants 17-ATP17-006 7 and 21-ATP21-0036; by STScI through grants HST-AR-16124.001-A and HST-GO-16730.016-A; by CXO through grant TM2-23005X; and by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement through a Cottrell Scholar Award. JM is funded by the Hirsch Foundation. KS acknowledges support from the Black Hole Initiative at Harvard University, which is funded by grants from the John Templeton Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and support from Simons Foundation.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society.
PY - 2023/9/1
Y1 - 2023/9/1
N2 - Negative feedback from accreting supermassive black holes is considered crucial in suppressing star formation and quenching massive galaxies. However, several models and observations suggest that black hole feedback may have a positive effect, triggering star formation by compressing interstellar medium gas to higher densities. We investigate the dual role of black hole feedback using cosmological hydrodynamic simulations from the Feedback In Realistic Environment (FIRE) project, incorporating a novel implementation of hyper-refined accretion-disc winds. Focusing on a massive, star-forming galaxy at z ∼2 (), we demonstrate that strong quasar winds with a kinetic power of ∼1046 erg s-1, persisting for over 20 Myr, drive the formation of a central gas cavity and significantly reduce the surface density of star formation across the galaxy's disc. The suppression of star formation primarily occurs by limiting the availability of gas for star formation rather than by evacuating the pre-existing star-forming gas reservoir (preventive feedback dominates over ejective feedback). Despite the overall negative impact of quasar winds, we identify several potential indicators of local positive feedback, including (1) the spatial anticorrelation between wind-dominated regions and star-forming clumps, (2) higher local star formation efficiency in compressed gas at the edge of the cavity, and (3) increased contribution of outflowing material to local star formation. Moreover, stars formed under the influence of quasar winds tend to be located at larger radial distances. Our findings suggest that both positive and negative AGN feedback can coexist within galaxies, although the local positive triggering of star formation has a minor influence on global galaxy growth.
AB - Negative feedback from accreting supermassive black holes is considered crucial in suppressing star formation and quenching massive galaxies. However, several models and observations suggest that black hole feedback may have a positive effect, triggering star formation by compressing interstellar medium gas to higher densities. We investigate the dual role of black hole feedback using cosmological hydrodynamic simulations from the Feedback In Realistic Environment (FIRE) project, incorporating a novel implementation of hyper-refined accretion-disc winds. Focusing on a massive, star-forming galaxy at z ∼2 (), we demonstrate that strong quasar winds with a kinetic power of ∼1046 erg s-1, persisting for over 20 Myr, drive the formation of a central gas cavity and significantly reduce the surface density of star formation across the galaxy's disc. The suppression of star formation primarily occurs by limiting the availability of gas for star formation rather than by evacuating the pre-existing star-forming gas reservoir (preventive feedback dominates over ejective feedback). Despite the overall negative impact of quasar winds, we identify several potential indicators of local positive feedback, including (1) the spatial anticorrelation between wind-dominated regions and star-forming clumps, (2) higher local star formation efficiency in compressed gas at the edge of the cavity, and (3) increased contribution of outflowing material to local star formation. Moreover, stars formed under the influence of quasar winds tend to be located at larger radial distances. Our findings suggest that both positive and negative AGN feedback can coexist within galaxies, although the local positive triggering of star formation has a minor influence on global galaxy growth.
KW - galaxies: evolution
KW - galaxies: star formation
KW - quasars: general
KW - quasars: supermassive black holes
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U2 - 10.1093/mnras/stad2079
DO - 10.1093/mnras/stad2079
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85168005699
SN - 0035-8711
VL - 524
SP - 3446
EP - 3463
JO - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
JF - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
IS - 3
ER -