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.

High velocity dispersion in a rare grand-design spiral galaxy at redshift z = 2.18.

Although grand-design spiral galaxies are relatively common in the local Universe, only one has been spectroscopically confirmed to lie at redshift z > 2 (HDFX 28; z = 2.011); and it may prove to be a major merger that simply resembles a spiral in projection. The rarity of spirals has been explained as a result of disks being dynamically 'hot' at z > 2 (refs 2-5), which may instead favour the formation of commonly observed clumpy structures. Alternatively, current instrumentation may simply not be sensitive enough to detect spiral structures comparable to those in the modern Universe. At z < 2, the velocity dispersion of disks decreases, and spiral galaxies are more numerous by z ≈ 1 (refs 7, 13-15). Here we report observations of the grand-design spiral galaxy Q2343-BX442 at z = 2.18. Spectroscopy of ionized gas shows that the disk is dynamically hot, implying an uncertain origin for the spiral structure. The kinematics of the galaxy are consistent with a thick disk undergoing a minor merger, which can drive the formation of short-lived spiral structure. A duty cycle of <100 Myr for such tidally induced spiral structure in a hot massive disk is consistent with its rarity.