Discovery of a pseudobulge galaxy launching powerful relativistic jets

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of a pseudo-bulge galaxy hosting a gamma-ray emitting AGN with powerful jets, suggesting an alternative, secular evolution pathway for black hole and galaxy growth beyond the traditional merger-driven model.

Contribution

It presents the first evidence of a gamma-ray AGN in a pseudo-bulge galaxy, indicating a non-merger evolutionary route for jet production.

Findings

Discovery of a pseudo-bulge galaxy hosting a gamma-ray AGN.

Evidence for secular processes driving black hole and galaxy growth.

Implication of an alternative co-evolutionary pathway for jet formation.

Abstract

Supermassive black holes launching plasma jets at close to speed of light, producing gamma-rays, have ubiquitously been found to be hosted by massive elliptical galaxies. Since elliptical galaxies are generally believed to be built through galaxy mergers, active galactic nuclei (AGN) launching relativistic jets are associated to the latest stages of galaxy evolution. We have discovered a pseudo-bulge morphology in the host galaxy of the gamma-ray AGN PKS 2004-447. This is the first gamma-ray emitter radio loud AGN found to be launched from a system where both black hole and host galaxy have been actively growing via secular processes. This is evidence for an alternative black hole-galaxy co-evolutionary path to develop powerful relativistic jets that is not merger-driven.