Misaligned Jets from Sgr A* and the Origin of Fermi/eROSITA Bubbles

Kartick C. Sarkar*, Santanu Mondal, Prateek Sharma, Tsvi Piran

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

One of the leading explanations for the origin of Fermi Bubbles is past jet activity in the Galactic center supermassive black hole Sgr A*. The claimed jets are often assumed to be perpendicular to the Galactic plane. Motivated by the orientation of pc-scale nuclear stellar disk and gas streams, as well as a low inclination of the accretion disk around Sgr A* inferred by the Event Horizon Telescope, we perform hydrodynamical simulations of nuclear jets significantly tilted relative to the Galactic rotation axis. The observed axisymmetry and hemisymmetry (north-south symmetry) of Fermi/eROSITA bubbles (FEBs) due to quasi-steady jets in Sgr A* could be produced if the jet had a super-Eddington power (≳5 × 1044 erg s−1) for a short time (jet active period ≲6 kyr) for a reasonable jet opening angle (≲10°). Such powerful explosions are, however, incompatible with the observed O viii/O vii line ratio toward the bubbles, even after considering electron-proton temperature nonequilibrium. We argue that the only remaining options for producing FEBs are (i) a low-luminosity (≈1040.5-41 erg s−1) magnetically dominated jet or accretion wind from the Sgr A*, or (ii) a supernovae or tidal disruption event driven wind of a similar luminosity from the Galactic center.

Original languageEnglish
Article number36
JournalAstrophysical Journal
Volume951
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jul 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.

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