The central PARSEC of galaxies, Adaptive Optics instrumentation development

Description

PARSEC is a multiwavelength investigation of the centre of the nearest galaxies at parsecs scale. It studies the brightest mv <19 mag, and nearest up to ~ 20 Mpc galaxies which allow a sampling of a few parsecs in the nuclear region. All PARSEC galaxies host an AGN of different activity level, spanning 7 order of magnitude in Eddington luminosity ratios, Lbol/Ledd ~ 0.5 10e-8, and Black-Hole masses in the 10e9 -10e7 Mo range. The use of a consistent physical scale across the electromagnetic spectrum allows PARSEC to fulfil its first goal, that is to isolate the core emission from the galaxy at any wavelength, for a wide range of accretion powers. The ultimate goal is to explore the physical conditions limited to accretion, incidence of starformation and onset of jets - by which a galactic nucleus mutates from an active to a progressively quiescent phase. The highly accreting, most luminous AGN have been extensively covered by PARSEC, one of our latest findings being a progressive decrease in radiative luminosity with increasing kinetic power the latter being for the first time directly measured from coronal-line gas kinematic. PARSEC is currently extending the investigation to the lower accreting AGN in the sample, the so called Low Luminosity Active Nuclei (LLAGN). This proposal aims at completing the parsecs-scale Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) in radio, millimetre and X-rays of the remaining 60% of the LLAGN sample, and modelling of their SED using as a constraint the emission line spectrum (Obj. 1). The joint SED emission-lines modelling procedure will allow us to set a firm conclusion on the contribution and nature of the accretion disc in LLAGN: power, size and temperature (Obj. 2). Further, a new method to estimate the kinetic power in AGN using coronal gas as kinematic tracer will be developed and extended to LLAGN. An empirical kinetic power calibration covering 4 orders in Eddington luminosity ratio, extending previous calibrations by two order of magnitude will be delivered (Obj. 3). A postdoc / 3 years is solicited to help the group with these 3 objectives.

Last but not least, PARSEC team is further proceeding with the study of circumnuclear star formation which is resolved at stellar-cluster scales next to the BH in PARSEC galaxies. The goal is to understand the processes by way of which matter feeds into circumnuclear star formation and the BH. As part of a multidisciplinary approach, PARSEC is leading the implementation of super-angular-resolution at the 10.4 m GTC telescopeby engineering and building the first Adaptive Optics system and instrument, FRIDA, for GRANTECAN, S.A.

Building from our multiwavelength expertise PARSEC team is further contributing to the outreach of Astronomy, by sharing our tools and data with the general public through the VASCO-Citizen web page and the popular Jornadas Astronomicas de Almeria

State of being in force
Level
Type of funding
AEI
MICIU