Résumé / Abstract Journal-club_Doctorants

Séminaire Doctorants / Seminar PhD students

« The effect of quasar mode AGN feedback on the host galaxy »

Rebekka Bieri
Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris (Paris, France)

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) have been found at the center of many local galaxies and are thought to play an important role in regulating the baryonic mass content of massive galaxies by releasing a fraction of the rest-mass accreted energy back into the galactic gas. The effect that accreting SMBHs have on their environment is called Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) feedback, and the two main manifestations of this feedback identified in the literature are the radio mode, powered by jets, and the quasar mode, powered by photons that couple to the gas and transfer their momentum.

In most cosmological simulations, quasar feedback is approximated as thermal energy deposited locally within the resolution element, with the efficiency of the coupling represented by a single parameter tuned to match global bservations. In reality this parameter hides complex physics: how radiation emitted from a thin accretion disc surrounding the SMBH effectively couples to the surrounding ISM and eventually drives a large-scale wind.

In this talk I will focus on how one can understand the effect of quasar feedback with the help of simulations. I will begin with an explanation of how one can simulate radiation with the hydro code RAMSES and then present the first ever simulated quasar mode AGN feedback simulated with a first principle radiative transfer code.
mercredi 8 avril 2015 - 17:00
Salle Entresol Daniel Chalonge, Institut d'Astrophysique
Page web du Séminaire / Seminar's webpage