Inward bound: following gas flows from nuclear spirals to the accretion disk in active galaxies

Abstract

A recent analysis of HST optical images of 34 nearby early-type active galaxies and of a matched sample of 34 inactive galaxies - both drawn from the Palomar survey - shows a clear excess of nuclear dusty structures (filaments, spirals and disks) in the active galaxies. This result supports the association of the dusty structures with the material which feeds the supermassive black hole (hereafter SMBH). Among the inactive galaxies there is instead an excess of nuclear stellar disks. As the active and inactive galaxies can be considered two phases of the "same" galaxy, the above findings and dust morphologies suggest an evolutionary scenario in which external material (gas and dust) is captured to the nuclear region where it settles and ends up feeding the active nucleus and replenishing the stellar disk - which is hidden by the dust in the active galaxies - with new stars. This evolutionary scenario is supported by recent gas kinematics of the inner few hundred parsecs of NGC1097, which shows streaming motions (with velocities ~ 50 km/s) towards the nucleus along spiral arms. The implied large scale mass accretion rate is much larger than the one derived in previous studies for the nuclear accretion disk, but is just enough to accumulate one million solar masses over a few million years in the nuclear region, thus consistent with the recent finding of a young circumnuclear starburst of one million solar masses within 9 parsecs from the nucleus in this galaxy.