2025-03-10 北海学園大学
＜関連情報＞
- https://www.hgu.jp/info/news/20250307-01.html
- https://alma-telescope.jp/news/press/hotgas-202503.html
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-025-02505-x
130億年前の超巨大ブラックホール近傍の温かいガス Warm gas in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole 13 billion years ago
K. Tadaki,F. Esposito,L. Vallini,T. Tsukui,T. Saito,D. Iono & T. Michiyama
Nature Astronomy Published:07 March 2025
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-025-02505-x
Abstract
Quasars, powered by supermassive black holes, are among the brightest objects in the Universe. In the vicinity of a supermassive black hole, X-ray photons from an active galactic nucleus can heat the surrounding gas to several hundred kelvin. Here we report observations of dust continuum and carbon monoxide (CO) J = 13–12 and J = 14–13 line emissions at a resolution of 130 pc in a luminous quasar at a redshift of 6. We successfully detected these high-J CO line emissions from warm gas in a compact disk component. The CO luminosity ratio in the central region of the compact disk is consistent with theoretical models in which X-ray heating dominates the CO excitation and the gas column density is as high as 1025 cm−2. This finding demonstrates that high-resolution observations of high-J CO lines are promising ways to identify extremely dust-obscured quasars in the early Universe.
