[Astro] Lunch Talk - 29/5/25

[Joseph Butler]

Hi everyone,

This week’s lunch talk will be given by Jade, at 1pm Thursday in A113. Title and abstract are below.
Title: A 13^CO Detection in a Jet-Driven Molecular Gas Flow
Abstract: Galaxies undergo significant evolution from the early Universe to the present day; feedback processes are vital ingredients needed to help untangle the details of this transformation. Powerful jets driven by active galactic nuclei (AGN) have a key role in suppressing gas cooling, modulating the cooling gas that infalls into the host galaxy's centre. These radio jets inflate large bubbles, which displace the hot atmosphere and are visible as cavities in X-ray surface brightness. In the central galaxy of Abell 1795, the powerful radio source has inflated two large bubbles, North (N) and South (S) of the AGN. These filaments of molecular gas are exclusively projected around the bubble rims and their smooth velocity gradients imply the gas flows are entrained by the bubbles (Russell et al. 2017). The interplay of molecular gas flows, jets and jet-inflated radio bubbles in AGN feedback remains unknown. Russell et al. (2017) found that the energy required to lift the N filament (10^9 M☉) exceeds the N radio bubble's mechanical energy. This result was produced by assuming the Galactic value for the CO-to-H_2 conversion factor, α_CO,MW, to determine the filament's molecular mass. This talk describes how a detection of 13^CO in Abell 1795’s entrained flow, made by the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), was used to measure α_CO and investigate if the mass was previously overestimated.

Thanks,
Joe
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