Effects of Varied Cosmic Ray Feedback from AGN on Massive Galaxy Properties

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution simulations to investigate how cosmic ray feedback from AGN influences massive galaxy properties, showing that different CR models can regulate star formation but produce diverse halo gas characteristics.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed simulation framework including multi-channel AGN feedback and CR transport, comparing their effects on galaxy and halo properties against observations.

Findings

All CR feedback models self-regulate and match observed galaxy scaling relations.

Variable CR injection efficiencies and transport produce quenched galaxies with realistic bulk properties.

Halo gas properties vary significantly across different CR feedback assumptions.

Abstract

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) provide energetic feedback necessary to `turn off' star formation in high-mass galaxies (M$_{\rm halo} \geq $ 10$^{12.5}$ M$_{\odot}$, $10.4 \leq \log(\frac{M_*}{M_\odot}) \leq 11$) as observed. Cosmic rays (CRs) have been proposed as a promising channel of AGN feedback, but the nature of CR feedback from AGN remains uncertain. We analyze a set of high-resolution simulations of massive galaxies from the Feedback in Realistic Environments (FIRE-3) project including multi-channel AGN feedback, explicitly evolving kinetic/mechanical, radiative, and spectrally-resolved CRs from the central black hole. Specifically, we explore different CR feedback and transport assumptions, calibrated to Milky Way local ISM constraints, and compare them to observed galaxy scaling relations. We find that all parameterizations explored self-regulate within agreement with observed galaxy scaling relations, demonstrating that CR injection efficiencies varied by $\sim$1.5 dex and locally-variable transport produce quenched galaxies with reasonable bulk properties; however, they feature orders-of-magnitude variant circumgalactic medium (CGM) gas properties. Our results indicate that multi-wavelength synthetic observations probing these varied halo properties from larger simulated samples in conjunction with observational comparisons may place novel constraints on how AGN physically quench star formation in massive galaxies.