RAD@home citizen science discovery of an AGN spewing a large unipolar radio bubble onto its merging companion galaxy [GA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/2210.06100


AGN feedback during galaxy merger has been the most favoured model to explain black hole-galaxy co-evolution. However, how the AGN-driven jet/wind/radiation is coupled with the gas of the merging galaxies, which leads to positive feedback, momentarily enhanced star formation, and subsequently negative feedback, a decline in star formation, is poorly understood. Only a few cases are known where the jet and companion galaxy interaction leads to minor off-axis distortions in the jets and enhanced star formation in the gas-rich minor companions. Here, we briefly report one extraordinary case, RAD12, discovered by RAD@home citizen science collaboratory, where for the first time a radio jet-driven bubble ~137 kpc is showing a symmetric reflection after hitting the incoming galaxy which is not a gas-rich minor but a gas-poor early-type galaxy in a major merger. Surprisingly, neither positive feedback nor any radio lobe on the counter jet side, if any, is detected. It is puzzling if RAD12 is a genuine one-sided jet or a case of radio lobe trapped, compressed and re-accelerated by shocks during the merger. This is the first imaging study of RAD12 presenting follow-up with the GMRT, archival MeerKAT radio data and CFHT optical data.

Read this paper on arXiv…

A. Hota, P. Dabhade, S. Vaddi, et. al.
Thu, 13 Oct 22
3/68

Comments: Published in the MNRAS Letters. Contains 5 pages and 2 figures. Comments and Collaborations for follow up of this #RADatHomeIndia #CitizenScience discovery, most welcome