Black hole jets on the scale of the cosmic web

Creators: Oei, Martijn S. S. L.^{1, 2}; Hardcastle, Martin J.³; Timmerman, Roland^{1, 4}; Gast, Aivin R. D. J. G. I. B.⁵; Botteon, Andrea⁶; Rodriguez, Antonio C.²; Stern, Daniel⁷; Calistro Rivera, Gabriela^{8, 9}; van Weeren, Reinout J.¹; Röttgering, Huub J. A.¹; Intema, Huib T.¹; de Gasperin, Francesco⁶; Djorgovski, S. G.²

1. Leiden University
2. California Institute of Technology
3. University of Hertfordshire
4. Durham University
5. University of Oxford
6. INAF–IRA, Bologna, Italy
7. Jet Propulsion Lab
8. European Southern Observatory
9. German Aerospace Center

Abstract

When sustained for megayears (refs. ^1,2), high-power jets from supermassive black holes (SMBHs) become the largest galaxy-made structures in the Universe³. By pumping electrons, atomic nuclei and magnetic fields into the intergalactic medium (IGM), these energetic flows affect the distribution of matter and magnetism in the cosmic web^4,5,6 and could have a sweeping cosmological influence if they reached far at early epochs. For the past 50 years, the known size range of black hole jet pairs ended at 4.6–5.0 Mpc (refs. ^7,8,9), or 20–30% of a cosmic void radius in the Local Universe¹⁰. An observational lack of longer jets, as well as theoretical results¹¹, thus suggested a growth limit at about 5 Mpc (ref. ¹²). Here we report observations of a radio structure spanning about 7 Mpc, or roughly 66% of a coeval cosmic void radius, apparently generated by a black hole between 4.4^(+0.2)_(-0.7) and 6.3 Gyr after the Big Bang. The structure consists of a northern lobe, a northern jet, a core, a southern jet with an inner hotspot and a southern outer hotspot with a backflow. This system demonstrates that jets can avoid destruction by magnetohydrodynamical instabilities over cosmological distances, even at epochs when the Universe was 7 to 15⁺⁶₋₂ times denser than it is today. How jets can retain such long-lived coherence is unknown at present.

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Acknowledgement

M.S.S.L.O. and R.J.v.W. acknowledge support from the VIDI research programme with project number 639.042.729, which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). M.S.S.L.O. also acknowledges support from the CAS–NWO programme for radio astronomy with project number 629.001.024, which is financed by the NWO. In addition, M.S.S.L.O., R.T. and R.J.v.W. acknowledge support from the ERC Starting Grant ClusterWeb 804208. M.J.H. acknowledges support from the UK STFC (ST/V000624/1). R.T. is grateful for support from the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (grant MR/T042842/1). A.B. acknowledges financial support from the European Union - Next Generation EU. F.d.G. acknowledges support from the ERC Consolidator Grant ULU 101086378. The work of D.S. was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). We thank F. Sweijen for making available legacystamps⁶⁷. We thank R. Caniato and J.H. Croston for illuminating discussions. LOFAR data products were provided by the LOFAR Surveys Key Science project (LSKSP⁶⁸) and were derived from observations with the International LOFAR Telescope (ILT). LOFAR³⁰ is the LOw-Frequency ARray designed and constructed by ASTRON. It has observing, data-processing and data-storage facilities in several countries, which are owned by various parties (each with their own funding sources) and which are collectively operated by the ILT foundation under a joint scientific policy. The efforts of the LSKSP have benefited from funding from the European Research Council, NOVA, NWO, CNRS-INSU, the SURF Co-operative, the UK Science and Technology Funding Council and the Jülich Supercomputing Centre. We thank the staff of the GMRT, who made these observations possible. The GMRT is run by the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Some of the data presented herein were obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California and NASA. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation.

Contributions

A.R.D.J.G.I.B.G. and M.S.S.L.O. discovered Porphyrion; M.J.H., assisted by citizen scientists, independently found the outflow as part of LOFAR Galaxy Zoo. M.S.S.L.O. coordinated the ensuing project. R.J.v.W., H.J.A.R. and M.J.H. advised M.S.S.L.O. throughout. A.B. re-reduced and imaged the 6.2″ and 19.8″ LOFAR data; R.J.v.W. contributed. R.T. reduced and imaged the 0.4″ LOFAR data. F.d.G. explored the use of LOFAR LBA data, which he reduced and imaged. M.S.S.L.O. wrote the uGMRT follow-up proposal. M.S.S.L.O. and H.T.I. reduced and imaged the uGMRT data. S.G.D., D.S. and H.J.A.R. were instrumental in securing Keck time (PI: S.G.D.). A.C.R. observed the host galaxy with the LRIS; A.C.R. and D.S. reduced the data. G.C.R. determined the SED and stellar mass of the host galaxy; M.S.S.L.O. contributed. M.J.H. determined core spectral indices of Mpc-scale outflows. M.S.S.L.O. determined the spurious association probability, the galaxy cluster distances and the circumgalactic cosmic web percentile. M.J.H. performed dynamical modelling; M.S.S.L.O. contributed. M.S.S.L.O. derived the deprojection and filament-heating formulae. M.S.S.L.O. wrote the article, with contributions from A.R.D.J.G.I.B.G., R.T. and A.C.R. All authors provided comments to improve the text.

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Resource type: Journal Article
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
Published in: Nature, 633(8030), 537-541, ISSN: 0028-0836.
Languages: English