An accreting supermassive black hole irradiating molecular gas in NGC
  2110
  The impact of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) on star formation has implications
for our understanding of the relationships between supermassive black holes and
their galaxies, as well as for the growth of galaxies over the history of the
Universe. We report on a high-resolution multi-phase study of the nuclear
environment in the nearby Seyfert galaxy NGC 2110 using the Atacama Large
Millimeter Array (ALMA), Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, and the Very
Large Telescope/SINFONI. We identify a region that is markedly weak in
low-excitation CO $2\rightarrow1$ emission from cold molecular gas, but appears
to be filled with ionised and warm molecular gas, which indicates that the AGN
is directly influencing the properties of the molecular material. Using
multiple molecular gas tracers, we demonstrate that, despite the lack of CO
line emission, the surface densities and kinematics of molecular gas vary
smoothly across the region. Our results demonstrate that the influence of an
AGN on star-forming gas can be quite localized. In contrast to widely-held
theoretical expectations, we find that molecular gas remains resilient to the
glare of energetic AGN feedback.
