Mar 21, 2013
Juergen Ott, NRAO
"Centaurus A @ ALMA+ATCA: Molecular Gas toward the AGN of the nearest radio galaxy"
Centaurus A and its associated host galaxy NGC 5128 are by far the most nearby radio galaxy. Its proximity provides us with the best opportunity to study the feeding of a supermassive, central black hole and the processing of accreting matter into large scale jets. In turn, jets have an impact on the interstellar medium that may inhibit or speed up star formation processes. We present Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) data toward the central ~300pc of CenA. We detect a large number of molecular species in emission and absorption. Line ratios, and eventually radiative transfer modeling, provides us with the best means to probe the molecular gas in the vicinity of the AGN. We characterize a number of absorption components that lie along the very warped disk structure of NGC5128, with very different linewidths ad velocities. We also obtained complementary Australia Telescope Compact Array observations that detect a water maser in the central nucleus, either directly emitted in the accretion disk or at the base of the emerging jets. In addition, we mapped the outer lobes of Cen A with a large mosaicking experiment.