Turning a New Page in the AGN Feedback Chapter: Mapping Multiphase AGN Feedback from Powerful Jets to Weak Winds

Speaker

Dr. Namrata Roy (Arizona State University)

Abstract

Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) are the most energetic phenomena in the universe, driving feedback through jets, multiphase outflows, and intense radiation. I will present a new chapter in our understanding of AGN feedback, showcasing recent breakthroughs from JWST, and spatially resolved spectroscopy. I will connect two seemingly extreme regimes: monstrous radio jets in the early Universe and weak “maintenance-mode” AGNs today, to demonstrate how feedback couples to gas across the ISM–CGM interface in various regimes. I will first show that High-redshift radio galaxies (HzRGs) within the first billion years after the Big Bang are uniquely powerful laboratories. Using JWST IFU data, I will highlight that these jets pierce through the surrounding gas, inflate enormous cocoons of shocked gas, and launch fast outflows in the ionized phase. I will present spatially resolved empirical constraints on mass, momentum, and energy flow rates across the jet-impacted regions, providing one of the clearest demonstrations yet of how radio jets deposit energy. I will then connect these ISM-scale diagnostics to CGM-scale probes of these jetted AGNs to quantify how far AGN energy truly propagates and emphasize how NASA’s HWO will be transformational for detecting the diffuse-CGM in AGN hosts. Finally, I will shift gears to the local universe and introduce the enigmatic “red geyser” galaxies. They exhibit much more compact, weaker jets from low luminosity AGNs and show direct evidence for a long-theorized “galactic-fountain” cycle. These systems exhibit weak but large-scale AGN driven biconical ionized outflows, coexisting with inward-raining cool neutral gas, potentially closing a feedback loop that helps maintain quiescence. Thus, by combining different observational constraints in widely diverse systems, I will show that the similar feedback physics can operate across physical scales, galaxy types, and cosmic time.

New Insights into AGN Feedback in the Local Universe: A Spatially Resolved View from JWST Spectroscopy

Speaker

Dr. Lulu Zhang (University of Texas, San Antonio)

Abstract

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), with its exceptional sensitivity, high angular and spectral resolution, and broad wavelength coverage, is revolutionizing detailed studies of nearby galaxies in the infrared. Infrared diagnostics from both ionized and molecular gas, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), provide powerful probes of the physical conditions within galaxies and offer important insights into their key evolutionary processes, particularly the feedback driven by active galactic nuclei (AGN). In this talk, I will present recent results on AGN feedback in the local Universe based on spatially resolved JWST spectroscopy using both MIRI/MRS and NIRSpec/IFU. By combining JWST measurements of gas properties, such as kinematics and line ratios, across multiple phases (ionized gas, H₂, PAHs, CO, and others) with theoretical predictions, we can directly probe the spatially resolved physical conditions in the vicinity of local AGN. This approach allows us to place stronger constraints on different feedback mechanisms (e.g., outflows and shocks) and to assess their impact on the interstellar medium (ISM) and, ultimately, on galaxy evolution. These studies provide critical observational benchmarks for galaxy-evolution models and help inform theoretical efforts to incorporate feedback processes in a more physically realistic manner.

Seminar Connection

Zoom Registration: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/T6icbUfETgWzE7XIzaN81Q