Daisaburo Kido, Kunihito Ioka, Kenta Hotokezaka, Kohei Inayoshi, Christopher M. Irwin
Published 2025-05-11, 9 pages, 5 figures, submitted to MNRAS
Recent observations by the James Webb Space Telescope have uncovered apopulation of compact, red object ($z\sim 4\text{--}7$) known as little reddots (LRDs). The presence of broad Balmer emission lines indicates activegalactic nuclei powered by supermassive black holes (BHs), while LRDs exhibitunusually weak X-ray and radio emission and low variability, suggestingsuper-Eddington accretion that obscures the central engine. We suggest thatsuch an extreme accretion disc inevitably drives strong outflows, which woulddisrupt the LRDs themselves unless confined within the nuclear region -- posinga general feedback problem for overmassive BHs. To resolve this, we proposethat the BH is embedded in a massive, optically thick envelope thatgravitationally confines the outflow, making any outflow a no-go. Thisenvelope, powered by accretion on to the BH, radiates at nearly the Eddingtonlimit, and is sustained by an infall of the interstellar medium at a rate onthe order of $\sim 1 M_{\odot}~{\rm yr}^{-1}$. A photosphere emerges eitherwithin the envelope or in the infalling medium, with a characteristictemperature of $5000$ - $7000 {\rm K}$, near the Hayashi limit. The resultingblackbody emission naturally explains the red optical continuum of the distinctV-shaped spectrum observed in most LRDs. Furthermore, the dynamical time-scaleat the photosphere, $\sim 0.01~{\rm pc}$, is consistent with the observedyear-scale variabilities. The nuclear structure and spectral features of LRDsare shaped by this envelope, which not only regulates feedback but also acts asa gas reservoir that sustains rapid BH growth in the early universe.
Rose A. Finn, Gregory Rudnick, Pascale Jablonka, Mpati Ramatsoku, Gautam Nagaraj, Benedetta Vulcani, Rebecca A. Koopmann, Matteo Fossati, James Agostino, Yannick Bahe, Santiago Garcia-Burillo, Gianluca Castignani, Francoise Combes, Kim Conger, Gabriella De Lucia, Vandana Desai, John Moustakas, Dara Norman, Damien Sperone-Longin, Melinda Townsend, Lizhi Xie, Daria Zakharova, Dennis Zaritsky
Published 2025-05-14, 21 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal
The Virgo Filament Survey (VFS) is a comprehensive study of galaxies thatreside in the extended filamentary structures surrounding the Virgo Cluster,out to 12 virial radii. The primary goal is to characterize all of the dominantbaryonic components within galaxies and to understand whether and how they areaffected by the filament environment. A key constituent of VFS is a narrowbandH$\alpha$ imaging survey of over 600 galaxies, VFS-H$\alpha$. The H$\alpha$images reveal detailed, resolved maps of the ionized gas and massivestar-formation. This imaging is particularly powerful as a probe ofenvironmentally-induced quenching because different physical processes affectthe spatial distribution of star formation in different ways. In this paper, wepresent the first results from the VFS-H$\alpha$ for the NGC~5364 group, alow-mass ($\log_{10}(M_{dyn}/M_\odot) < 13)$ system located at the western edgeof the Virgo~III filament. We combine H$\alpha$ imaging with resolved H~Iobservations from MeerKAT for eight group members. These galaxies exhibitpeculiar morphologies, including strong distortions in the stars and the gas,truncated H~I and H$\alpha$ disks, H~I tails, extraplanar H$\alpha$ emission,and off-center H$\alpha$ emission. These signatures are suggestive ofenvironmental processing such as tidal interactions, ram pressure stripping,and starvation. We quantify the role of ram pressure stripping expected in thisgroup, and find that it can explain the cases of H~I tails and truncatedH-alpha for all but one of the disk-dominated galaxies. Our observationsindicate that multiple physical mechanisms are disrupting the baryon cycle inthese group galaxies.