Physics – Optics
Scientific paper
Dec 2006
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006phdt........25p&link_type=abstract
PhD Thesis, Universitat Koln, 142 pages.
Physics
Optics
Scientific paper
The thesis contains the results of my recent projects in astrophysical research. All projects aim at pushing the limits of our knowledge about the interaction between a galaxy, the fundamental building block of today's universe, and a supermassive black hole (SMBH) at its center. Over the past years a lot of observational evidence has been gathered for the current understanding, that at least a major part of the galaxies with a stellar bulge contain central SMBHs. The typical extragalactic approach consists of searching for the spectroscopic pattern of Keplerian rotation, produced by stars and gas, when orbiting a central dark mass (Kormendy & Richstone 1995). It suggests that a significant fraction of large galaxies host in their very nucleus a SMBH of millions to billions of solar masses (Kormendy & Gebhardt 2001). In the closest case, the center of our Milky Way, the most central stars, which can be imaged, were shown to move on orbits with circulation times of a few decades only, evidencing a mass and compactness of the dark counter part of the Keplerian motion, which can only be explained by a SMBH (Eckart & Genzel 1996; Ghez et al. 2000; Schödel et al. 2002).
Having acknowledged the widespread existence of SMBHs the obvious next step is investigating the interaction with their environment. Although the basic property of a SMBH, which is concentrating a huge amount of mass in a ludicrously small volume defined by the Schwarzschild radius, only creates a deep gravitational trough, its existence evokes much more phenomena than simply attracting the surrounding matter. It can trigger or exacerbate star formation via tidal forces (Morris 1993). It shapes the distribution of its surrounding matter to accretion discs, which themselves release gravitational potential energy as radiation, possibly due to magnetic friction (Blandford 1995). The radiation efficiency of such active galactic nuclei (AGN) can become roughly 100 times more efficient than atomic nuclear reactions in stars. In the most active galaxies known, the radiating accretion disc of the central SMBH engine easily outshines the stellar light of the entire galaxy (Blandford 1995). In addition to the light, plasma streams can emerge from the innermost regions at relativistic velocities, returning energy to the host galaxy (host) and creating jets and lobes with strong observational signatures, especially at radio and X-ray wavelengths (Wilson 2003).
New insights in the wide field of SMBH/host interaction are often related to the development of new, more sensitive instruments and telescopes. For example the idea, that a high luminosity AGN may result from a merger event between two galaxies, could only develop with the upcoming high resolution and sensitive imaging capabilities needed to detect the highly distorted host galaxy morphologies of (post-)merger galaxies (Heckman et al. 1986). Furthermore multi-wavelength approaches, which combine the results of measurements at different wavelengths, often lead to new conclusions or confirm unsecured hypotheses. Thus developing a new instrument can be as valuable as combining different datasets. I follow both approaches and developed projects which (i) deal with new instrumentation and telescope technology, (ii) combine datasets from different wavelengths and resolutions, and (iii) incorporate recent theoretical models and predictions, which can be verified empirically. While some projects are more focused on investigating the power of new observational techniques, others incorporate acknowledged instruments to probe predictions based on previous observations and models and trace special phenomena of SMBH/host interaction. But in most cases aspects of all three items appear.
The SMBH/host interaction results in phenomena at all linear size scales of the system, from the direct accretion of matter onto the central black hole up to radio jets crossing the entire galaxy. Thus interaction effects do not simply concentrate on the innermost region of a galaxy. Furthermore an increasing number of apparently totally distinct phenomena and properties of the SMBH/host system appear to be related to each other, provoking unifying ideas and models to explain the galaxy formation and evolution. For example several different types of AGN are understood as projection or orientation effects, claiming that the same AGN looks totally different as viewed from different sides (e.g. Antonucci & Miller 1985).
The thesis is structured to reflect this general perception. All scales of size, AGN luminosity, and nuclear activity appear. The thesis consists of six chapters. The first two compile astrophysical and technical background of the individual projects, which themselves are presented in the following four chapters. While the first project (Chapter 3) deals with observations of the innermost parsec of our Galaxy, Chapter 4 presents data of the inner kpc of an active galaxy. The subjects of Chapters 5 and 6 are very luminous AGN/host systems, so-called QSOs. Whereas Chapter 5 presents global, spatially unresolved properties of SMBH/host systems, the radio jet, analyzed in the final Chapter 6, combines all size scales. It is investigated from close to its origin out to several kpc. The accretion onto the black hole of the Milky Way (Chapter 3) is extremely inefficient (Genzel et al. 2003a) and the SMBH possibly interacts dominantly via tidal forces only. The next discussed system (Chapter 4) is the prototype of moderately luminous Seyfert 2 AGN, NGC 1068. Here a strong local influence of the nuclear X-ray radiation is observed (Usero et al. 2004). Chapter 5 deals with the possible global importance of radiative interaction between highly luminous QSO AGN and the host. The radio jet in Chapter 6 definitely shows signs of interaction with the matter of its host several kpc away from the nucleus. Chapters 3-6 include a dedicated introductory and a conclusive section, which put the results obtained in the larger astrophysical context of the observation.
The observational techniques chosen vary in dependence of the observed phenomenon. One major goal of especially Chapters 3 and 4 is to prove by successful explorative observations the scientific perspectives of the new instruments. Chapter 3 deals with the pioneering interferometric infrared study of stellar sources and their surroundings in the immediate vicinity of the SMBH at the center of the Milky Way. I was able to use the resolving power of an optical large baseline interferometer (OLBI) to investigate for the first time the different structures and excitation conditions of interstellar and circumstellar dust in 200 mpc distance to the SMBH. It is unknown whether the standard models for star and dust formation, which themselves dominate the infrared appearance of an inactive galaxy as the Milky Way, still apply under the strong tidal forces of gravity, exerted by the central SMBH.
During the course of my doctoral research, I worked 2.5 years within the VLT Interferometry (VLTI) group of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in M"unchen and Chile. I obtained the very first infrared fringes on GC sources and investigated the different instrument capabilities at the current sensitivity limit of the VLTI. The VLTI is the world leading stellar interferometric facility providing the infrastructure to combine the light of up to four 8m-class Adaptive Optics corrected telescopes, which themselves represent the state-of-the-art of optical-infrared telescope technology. The accomplished work includes the investigation of different data reduction techniques with respect to maximum accuracy and signal-to-noise ratios. The VLTI is right in the process of construction. While first modes are already open to the astronomical community, several advanced modes and instruments are still at different preliminary stages, ranging from early design studies to advanced instrument commissioning. The experiences of my VLTI observations, fully exploiting the currently available observing modes, and the data reduction were fed back via close collaboration to the Paranal Ob
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