Effects of Varied Cosmic Ray Feedback from AGN on Massive Galaxy Properties

Journal article, 2026

Active galactic nuclei (AGN) provide energetic feedback necessary to "turn off" star formation in high-mass galaxies (Mhalo >= 1012.5 M circle dot, 10.4 <= log(M*M circle dot)<= 11 ) as observed. Cosmic rays (CRs) have been proposed as a promising channel of AGN feedback, but the nature of CR feedback from AGN remains uncertain. We analyze a set of high-resolution simulations of massive galaxies from the Feedback in Realistic Environments (FIRE-3) project including multi-channel AGN feedback, explicitly evolving kinetic/mechanical, radiative, and spectrally-resolved CRs from the central black hole. Specifically, we explore different CR feedback and transport assumptions, calibrated to Milky Way local ISM constraints, and compare them to observed galaxy scaling relations. We find that all parameterizations explored self-regulate within agreement with observed galaxy scaling relations, demonstrating that CR injection efficiencies varied by similar to 1.5 dex and locally-variable transport produce quenched galaxies with reasonable bulk properties; however, they feature orders-of-magnitude variant circumgalactic medium gas properties. Our results indicate that multi-wavelength synthetic observations probing these varied halo properties from larger simulated samples in conjunction with observational comparisons may place novel constraints on how AGN physically quench star formation in massive galaxies.