Ionized and hot molecular outflows in the inner 500 pc of NGC1275

TL;DR

This study maps ionized and molecular gas outflows in NGC1275's inner 900 pc, revealing high-velocity outflows with limited feedback power, shedding light on AGN influence on galaxy evolution.

Contribution

First detailed kinematic mapping of multi-phase gas outflows in NGC1275 at ~70 pc resolution, linking outflows to AGN activity and shock excitation.

Findings

Hot molecular and ionized outflows reach velocities up to 2000 km/s.

Outflows have low kinetic power, insufficient for significant AGN feedback.

Shocks from outflows produce observed emission lines.

Abstract

The role of feedback from Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) in the evolution of galaxies is still not not fully understood, mostly due to the lack of observational constraints in the multi-phase gas kinematics on the ten to hundred parsec scales. We have used the Gemini Near-infrared Integral Field Spectrograph (NIFS) to map the molecular and ionized gas kinematics in the inner 900$\times$900 pc$^2$ of the Seyfert galaxy NGC1275 at a spatial resolution of $\sim$70 pc. From the fitting of the CO absorption bandheads in the K-band, we derive a stellar velocity dispersion of $265\pm26$ km s$^{-1}$, which implies a black hole mass of $M_{\rm SMBH}=1.1^{+0.9}_{-0.5}\times10^9$ M$_\odot$. We find hot ($T\gtrsim1000$ K) molecular and ionized outflows with velocities of up to 2 000 km s$^{-1}$ and mass outflow rates of $2.7\times10^{-2} {\rm M_\odot}$ yr$^{-1}$ and $1.6 {\rm M_\odot}$ yr$^{-1}$, respectively, in each of these gas phases. The kinetic power of the ionized outflows corresponds to only 0.05 per cent of the luminosity of the AGN of NGC 1275, indicating that they are not powerful enough to provide significant AGN feedback, but may be effective in redistributing the gas in the central region of the galaxy. The AGN driven outflows seem to be responsible for the shocks necessary to produce the observed H$_2$ and [Fe II] line emission.