| Authors : | Ananda Hota, Pratik Dabhade, Sravani Vaddi, Chiranjib Konar, Sabyasachi Pal, Mamta Gulati,
C S Stalin, Ck Avinash, Avinash Kumar, Megha Rajoria, Arundhati Purohit |
| Abstract : | Active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback during galaxy merger has been the most favoured model to explain black hole–galaxy co-evolution. However, how the AGN-driven jet/wind/radiation is coupled with the gas of the merging galaxies, which leads to positive feedback, momentarily enhanced star formation, and subsequently negative feedback, a decline in star formation, is poorly understood. Only a few cases are known where the jet and companion galaxy interaction leads to minor off-axis distortions in the jets and enhanced star formation in the gas-rich minor companions. Here, we briefly report one extraordinary case, RAD12, discovered by RAD@home citizen science collaboratory, where for the first time a radio jet–driven bubble (∼ 137 kpc) is showing a symmetric reflection after hitting the incoming galaxy which is not a gas-rich minor but a gas-poor early-type galaxy in a major merger. Surprisingly, neither positive feedback nor any radio lobe on the counter jet side, if any, is detected. It is puzzling if RAD12 is a genuine one-sided jet or a case of radio lobe trapped, compressed and re-accelerated by shocks during the merger. This is the first imaging study of RAD12 presenting follow-up with the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope, archival MeerKAT radio data and Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope optical data. (Note that the result was published recently in MNRAS Letters and was press-released by RAS, NCRA, CEBS & RAD@home, creating wide media coverage and public interest. https://radathomeindia.org/press-release https://academic.oup.com/mnrasl/article/517/1/L86/6755525 This will also be presented orally in IAU symposium 375 on 6th Dec 2022) |
