Reality and Myths of AGN Feedback

Determining the role of AGN feedback in galaxy evolution remains a big puzzle in our understanding of galaxy evolution. Enormous observational efforts have been made to constrain the incidence, kinematics and energetics of powerful outflows as well as their role providing “feedback” to their host galaxy's, such as by suppressing or enhancing star formation. While a lot of progress has happened we still face several observational and conceptual issues.

This Lorentz Center workshops aims to join experts with a variety of expertise, all working in the field of AGN feedback, to provide a collaborative effort in addressing several of the outstanding issues related to AGN outflows. They will investigate how previous results may have been effected by several observational effects such as beam-smearing in the data and sample selection. They will set strategies to quantify the impact of AGN feedback given the challenges in characterizing the multi-phase nature of the interstellar medium and in interpreting the results given the potential time delays between AGN igniting and their observed impact. Furthermore, they will address the outstanding question of if AGN outflows are pre-dominantly mechanically driven by a radio jet or radiatively driven by the light from the accretion disc. Hands-on sessions to look at data together with extensive discussions are planned to tackle these issues and pave the way for future studies.

The final aims of this workshop is to prepare a review article of the field and create new collaborations to coordinate future efforts with current or upcoming facilities such as the James Webb Space telescope, ALMA, MUSE and the Jansky Very Large Array.