Megaparsec relativistic jets launched from an accreting supermassive black hole in an extreme spiral galaxy
- The Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune University Campus, Post Bag 4, Pune 411007 (India)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, PA 19104 (United States)
- UM-DAE Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences, Vidyanagari, Mumbai 400098 (India)
- Department of Physics, W.M.O. Arts and Science College, Post Office Muttil, North Kalpetta, Wayanad (India)
- National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA), TIFR, Pune University Campus, Post Bag 3, Ganeshkhind, Pune 411 007 (India)
- Department of Physics, Newman College, Thodupuzha 685 585 (India)
The radio galaxy phenomenon is directly connected to mass-accreting, spinning supermassive black holes found in the active galactic nuclei. It is still unclear how the collimated jets of relativistic plasma on hundreds to thousands of kiloparsec scales form and why they are nearly always launched from the nuclei of bulge-dominated elliptical galaxies and not flat spirals. Here we present the discovery of the giant radio source J2345–0449 (z = 0.0755), a clear and extremely rare counterexample where relativistic jets are ejected from a luminous and massive spiral galaxy on a scale of ∼1.6 Mpc, the largest known so far. Extreme physical properties observed for this bulgeless spiral host, such as its high optical and infrared luminosity, large dynamical mass, rapid disk rotation, and episodic jet activity, are possibly the results of its unusual formation history, which has also assembled, via gas accretion from a disk, its central black hole of mass >2 × 10{sup 8} M {sub ☉}. The very high mid-IR luminosity of the galaxy suggests that it is actively forming stars and still building a massive disk. We argue that the launch of these powerful jets is facilitated by an advection-dominated, magnetized accretion flow at a low Eddington rate onto this unusually massive (for a bulgeless disk galaxy) and possibly fast spinning central black hole. Therefore, J2345–0449 is an extremely rare, unusual galactic system whose properties challenge the standard paradigms for black hole growth and the formation of relativistic jets in disk galaxies. Thus, it provides fundamental insight into accretion disk-relativistic jet coupling processes.
- OSTI ID:
- 22356555
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 788, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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