An Accreting Supermassive Black Hole Irradiating Molecular Gas in NGC 2110
The impact of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) 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 multiphase study of the nuclear environment in the nearby 
Seyfert galaxy NGC 2110 using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, Hubble and Spitzer Space 
Telescopes, and the Very Large Telescope/SINFONI. We identify a region that is markedly weak in low-excitation 
CO 2  1 emission from cold molecular gas, but appears to be filled with ionized 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 starforming 
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.