Suppressing star formation in quiescent galaxies with supermassive black hole winds.

Quiescent galaxies with little or no ongoing star formation dominate the population of galaxies with masses above 2 × 10(10) times that of the Sun; the number of quiescent galaxies has increased by a factor of about 25 over the past ten billion years (refs 1-4). Once star formation has been shut down, perhaps during the quasar phase of rapid accretion onto a supermassive black hole, an unknown mechanism must remove or heat the gas that is subsequently accreted from either stellar mass loss or mergers and that would otherwise cool to form stars. Energy output from a black hole accreting at a low rate has been proposed, but observational evidence for this in the form of expanding hot gas shells is indirect and limited to radio galaxies at the centres of clusters, which are too rare to explain the vast majority of the quiescent population. Here we report bisymmetric emission features co-aligned with strong ionized-gas velocity gradients from which we infer the presence of centrally driven winds in typical quiescent galaxies that host low-luminosity active nuclei. These galaxies are surprisingly common, accounting for as much as ten per cent of the quiescent population with masses around 2 × 10(10) times that of the Sun. In a prototypical example, we calculate that the energy input from the galaxy's low-level active supermassive black hole is capable of driving the observed wind, which contains sufficient mechanical energy to heat ambient, cooler gas (also detected) and thereby suppress star formation.

A local clue to the reionization of the universe.

Identifying the population of galaxies that was responsible for the reionization of the universe is a long-standing quest in astronomy. We present a possible local analog that has an escape fraction of ionizing flux of 21%. Our detection confirms the existence of gaps in the neutral gas enveloping the starburst region. The candidate contains a massive yet highly compact star-forming region. The gaps are most likely created by the unusually strong winds and intense ionizing radiation produced by this extreme object. Our study also validates the indirect technique of using the residual flux in saturated low-ionization interstellar absorption lines for identifying such leaky galaxies. Because direct detection of ionizing flux is impossible at the epoch of reionization, this represents a highly valuable technique for future studies.

The coevolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes: a local perspective.

One of the most fascinating discoveries in the past decade was that galaxies typically contain a centrally located black hole with a mass that is millions or even billions of times that of the Sun. There is now compelling evidence that we cannot understand how galaxies formed and evolved without understanding the life cycles of these supermassive black holes (and vice versa). We summarize the current understanding of this coevolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes (based largely on observations of the local, present-day universe) and describe prospects for the future.

The formation of bulges and black holes: lessons from a census of active galaxies in the SDSS.

We examine the relationship between galaxies, supermassive black holes and AGN using a sample of 23,000 narrow-emission-line ('type 2') active galactic nuclei (AGN) drawn from a sample of 123,000 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We have studied how AGN host properties compare with those of normal galaxies and how they depend on the luminosity of the active nucleus. We find that AGN reside in massive galaxies and have distributions of sizes and concentrations that are similar to those of the early-type galaxies in our sample. The host galaxies of low-luminosity AGN have stellar populations similar to normal early types. The hosts of high- luminosity AGN have much younger mean stellar ages, and a significant fraction have experienced recent starbursts. High-luminosity AGN are also found in lower-density environments. We then use the stellar velocity dispersions of the AGN hosts to estimate black hole masses and their [OIII]lambda5007 emission-line luminosities to estimate black hole accretion rates. We find that the volume averaged ratio of star formation to black hole accretion is approximately 1000 for the bulge-dominated galaxies in our sample. This is remarkably similar to the observed ratio of stellar mass to black hole mass in nearby bulges. Most of the present-day black hole growth is occurring in black holes with masses less than 3 x 10(7)M(3). Our estimated accretion rates imply that low-mass black holes are growing on a time-scale that is comparable with the age of the Universe. Around 50% this growth takes place in AGN that are radiating within a factor of five of the Eddington luminosity. Such systems are rare, making up only 0.2% of the low-mass black hole population at the present day. The remaining growth occurs in lower luminosity AGN. The growth time-scale increases by more than an order of magnitude for the most massive black holes in our sample. We conclude that the evolution of the AGN luminosity function documented in recent optical and X-ray surveys is driven by a decrease in the characteristic mass scale of actively accreting black holes.