Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS
Volume 724, Issue 1, Pages L30-L33Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/2041-8205/724/1/L30
Keywords
quasars: general; quasars: individual (IC 2497)
Categories
Funding
- NASA [NNX09AR22G, NXX09AV69G, PF9-00069, NAS8-03060]
- Leverhulme Trust
- STFC
- Science and Technology Facilities Council [ST/H007156/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- NASA [106830, NNX09AR22G] Funding Source: Federal RePORTER
- STFC [ST/H007156/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Direct For Education and Human Resources
- Division Of Research On Learning [0941610] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Galaxy formation is significantly modulated by energy output from supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies which grow in highly efficient luminous quasar phases. The timescale on which black holes transition into and out of such phases is, however, unknown. We present the first measurement of the shutdown timescale for an individual quasar using X-ray observations of the nearby galaxy IC 2497, which hosted a luminous quasar no more than 70,000 years ago that is still seen as a light echo in Hanny's Voorwerp, but whose present-day radiative output is lower by at least two, and more likely by over four, orders of magnitude. This extremely rapid shutdown provides new insight into the physics of accretion in supermassive black holes and may signal a transition of the accretion disk to a radiatively inefficient state.
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