arXiv subjects

Elena Murchikova

Publications and source records attributed to Elena Murchikova.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

The Discovery of an Active Wind from the Milky Way's Black Hole

Every large galaxy has a black hole in its center. The interaction between the black hole and its host profoundly shapes galactic evolution and the Universe as a whole. The key features of this interaction are black hole jets -- or more generally, winds -- which every black hole must have. Despite the proximity and importance of our Galaxy's central black hole, Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the active wind from it has eluded scientists for over half a century. Here we report the discovery of a large active wind from Sgr A* using unprecedentedly deep (T$_b \sim30$ mK) and high angular resolution (<0.25") observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA). We detect a large conical clearing in the cold molecular gas surrounding Sgr A* that is at least 1~parsec long and has a ~45 degree opening angle. The morphology and energetics of this structure are consistent with active clearing of gas by a hot wind from Sgr A*.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2025

The JWST Galactic Center Survey -- A White Paper

The inner hundred parsecs of the Milky Way hosts the nearest supermassive black hole, largest reservoir of dense gas, greatest stellar density, hundreds of massive main and post main sequence stars, and the highest volume density of supernovae in the Galaxy. As the nearest environment in which it is possible to simultaneously observe many of the extreme processes shaping the Universe, it is one of the most well-studied regions in astrophysics. Due to its proximity, we can study the center of our Galaxy on scales down to a few hundred AU, a hundred times better than in similar Local Group galaxies and thousands of times better than in the nearest active galaxies. The Galactic Center (GC) is therefore of outstanding astrophysical interest. However, in spite of intense observational work over the past decades, there are still fundamental things unknown about the GC. JWST has the unique capability to provide us with the necessary, game-changing data. In this White Paper, we advocate for a JWST NIRCam survey that aims at solving central questions, that we have identified as a community: i) the 3D structure and kinematics of gas and stars; ii) ancient star formation and its relation with the overall history of the Milky Way, as well as recent star formation and its implications for the overall energetics of our galaxy's nucleus; and iii) the (non-)universality of star formation and the stellar initial mass function. We advocate for a large-area, multi-epoch, multi-wavelength NIRCam survey of the inner 100\,pc of the Galaxy in the form of a Treasury GO JWST Large Program that is open to the community. We describe how this survey will derive the physical and kinematic properties of ~10,000,000 stars, how this will solve the key unknowns and provide a valuable resource for the community with long-lasting legacy value.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2017

Thermal chiral vortical and magnetic waves: new excitation modes in chiral fluids

In certain circumstances, chiral (parity-violating) medium can be described hydrodynamically as a chiral fluid with microscopic quantum anomalies. Possible examples of such systems include strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma, liquid helium 3He-A, neutron stars and the Early Universe. We study first-order hydrodynamics of a chiral fluid on a vortex background and in an external magnetic field. We show that there are two previously undiscovered modes describing heat waves propagating along the vortex and magnetic field. We call them the Thermal Chiral Vortical Wave and Thermal Chiral Magnetic Wave. We also identify known gapless excitations of density (chiral vortical and chiral magnetic waves) and transverse velocity (chiral Alfven wave). We demonstrate that the velocity of the chiral vortical wave is zero, when the full hydrodynamic framework is applied, and hence the wave is absent and the excitation reduces to the charge diffusion mode. We also comment on the frame-dependent contributions to the obtained propagation velocities.

hep-th↗