Formation of Cosmic Noon Protogalaxies via Quasar-Induced Fragmentation of a Cosmic Filament
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| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866911155011715072 |
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| author | Mićić, Marko Nanayakkara, Themiya Dai, Xinyu Bailin, Jeremy Kolčić, Miljan |
| author_facet | Mićić, Marko Nanayakkara, Themiya Dai, Xinyu Bailin, Jeremy Kolčić, Miljan |
| contents | When black hole jets encounter ambient medium, they can compress the gas, trigger star formation, and create stellar clusters containing tens of thousands of stars. Here, we report a remarkable discovery of such a phenomenon that happened just 2.2 billion years after the Big Bang, during the Cosmic Noon era. Quasar SDSSJ141924.44+532315.5, powered by a one-billion-solar-mass black hole, is seen blasting a powerful jet that interacts with a hypermassive gas reservoir, creating a fascinating, clumpy, arc-like structure spanning over 250 kiloparsecs in projected length, consisting of at least eight clumps. Each clump contains billions of stars, is as massive as the Milky Way, and exhibits extreme levels of star formation. We interpret these findings as fragmentation of a cosmic filament triggered by a jet overpressurized expanding cocoon, which leads to the birth of protogalaxies, a process observed at scales never seen before. We find that the physical conditions within the filament are favorable for a fragmentation scenario to occur. We also discuss the survivability and evolution of individual clumps in the context of unsolved galaxy formation theory problems. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_10670 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Formation of Cosmic Noon Protogalaxies via Quasar-Induced Fragmentation of a Cosmic Filament Mićić, Marko Nanayakkara, Themiya Dai, Xinyu Bailin, Jeremy Kolčić, Miljan Astrophysics of Galaxies When black hole jets encounter ambient medium, they can compress the gas, trigger star formation, and create stellar clusters containing tens of thousands of stars. Here, we report a remarkable discovery of such a phenomenon that happened just 2.2 billion years after the Big Bang, during the Cosmic Noon era. Quasar SDSSJ141924.44+532315.5, powered by a one-billion-solar-mass black hole, is seen blasting a powerful jet that interacts with a hypermassive gas reservoir, creating a fascinating, clumpy, arc-like structure spanning over 250 kiloparsecs in projected length, consisting of at least eight clumps. Each clump contains billions of stars, is as massive as the Milky Way, and exhibits extreme levels of star formation. We interpret these findings as fragmentation of a cosmic filament triggered by a jet overpressurized expanding cocoon, which leads to the birth of protogalaxies, a process observed at scales never seen before. We find that the physical conditions within the filament are favorable for a fragmentation scenario to occur. We also discuss the survivability and evolution of individual clumps in the context of unsolved galaxy formation theory problems. |
| title | Formation of Cosmic Noon Protogalaxies via Quasar-Induced Fragmentation of a Cosmic Filament |
| topic | Astrophysics of Galaxies |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.10670 |