Tracing the Milky Way's Vestigial Nuclear Jet
Abstract
MeerKAT radio continuum and XMM-Newton X-ray images have recently revealed a spectacular bipolar channel at the Galactic Center that spans several degrees (0.5 kpc). An intermittent jet likely formed this channel and is consistent with earlier evidence of a sustained, Seyfert-level outburst fueled by black-hole accretion onto Sgr A several Myr ago. Therefore, to trace a now weak jet that perhaps penetrated, deflected, and percolated along multiple paths through the interstellar medium, relevant interactions are identified and quantified in archival X-ray images, Hubble Space Telescope Paschen images and Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array millimeter-wave spectra, and new SOAR telescope IR spectra. Hydrodynamical simulations are used to show how a currently weak jet can explain these structures and inflate the ROSAT/eROSITA X-ray and Fermi -ray bubbles that extend from the Galactic plane. Thus, our Galactic outflow has features in common with energetic, jet-driven structures in the prototypical Seyfert galaxy NGC 1068.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2109.00901,
title = {Tracing the Milky Way's Vestigial Nuclear Jet},
author = {Gerald Cecil and Alexander Y. Wagner and Joss Bland-Hawthorn and Geoffrey V. Bicknell and Dipanjan Mukherjee},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2109.00901},
year = {2021}
}
Comments
30 pages, 32 figures in main text, 17 interactive figure and control Javascript in /anc subdirectory. Please retrieve paper with full resolution figures and interactive figure at http://physics.unc.edu/~cecil/MWjet; paper text and figures revised to agree with published version in the ApJ except somehow they managed to completely botch Fig 1 so the correct version is in this archive