21.02.2013 Views

Gas Disks and Supermassive Black Holes in Nearby Radio Galaxies

Gas Disks and Supermassive Black Holes in Nearby Radio Galaxies

Gas Disks and Supermassive Black Holes in Nearby Radio Galaxies

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

larger than the generally expected sphere of <strong>in</strong>fluence (see Equation 1.1 below). These<br />

results may imply that the central black hole is able to have k<strong>in</strong>ematic <strong>in</strong>fluences far<br />

<strong>in</strong>to the gas disk, <strong>and</strong> may even be able to regulate flow (<strong>and</strong> hence the fuel<strong>in</strong>g of the<br />

central eng<strong>in</strong>e) though these mechanisms.<br />

The nuclear gas <strong>and</strong> dust may be perturbed by sources unrelated to the gravita-<br />

tional potential of the galaxy, for example <strong>in</strong>teractions with jets, starburst activity<br />

<strong>and</strong> galactic mergers, each of which could have considerable consequences for the<br />

k<strong>in</strong>ematics of the gas, <strong>and</strong> the organization of structures <strong>in</strong> the central regions of<br />

these galaxies.<br />

Solórzano-Iñarrea et al. (2001) suggest that the emission l<strong>in</strong>e gas may be affected<br />

by jet <strong>in</strong>duced shocks even <strong>in</strong> sources where the radio emission structures are much<br />

larger <strong>in</strong> extent than the regions of emission l<strong>in</strong>e gas (as is the case for the radio<br />

galaxies described <strong>in</strong> this thesis). It would take a certa<strong>in</strong> amount of misalignment<br />

between jet <strong>and</strong> disk for such <strong>in</strong>teractions to be possible, <strong>and</strong> such large misalignments<br />

between disks <strong>and</strong> jets may be observed <strong>in</strong> some radio galaxies (Schmitt et al., 2002;<br />

Verdoes Kleijn & de Zeeuw, 2004).<br />

Starbursts <strong>and</strong> AGN go h<strong>and</strong> <strong>in</strong> h<strong>and</strong> <strong>in</strong> many galactic nuclei (Beckman, 2001)<br />

<strong>and</strong> episodes of star burst activity could <strong>in</strong>duce shocks <strong>in</strong>to the gas disks, hav<strong>in</strong>g a<br />

9

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!