Abstact: Galactic nuclear feedback regulates star formation and baryon cycling, yet the physical mechanisms that couple feedback energy to the multiphase interstellar medium remain uncertain. I present a comparative, multi wavelength view of nuclear feedback that highlights the potential dynamical role of magnetic fields. Using the Milky Way’s central molecular zone as a resolved laboratory, I discuss parsec scale X ray threads associated with nonthermal radio filaments, whose properties favor hot plasma heated and confined by magnetic reconnection. Recent molecular-line surveys further reveal that cold gas in the nuclear outflow exists primarily in small, short lived clumps, placing strong constraints on multiphase coupling. I then compare these Galactic results with nearby galaxies such as M106 and NGC 3079, where large-scale bipolar bubbles and radio caps suggest that magnetic pressure and structure can be dynamically important.
Short bio: Qingde Daniel Wang is a professor in the Astronomy Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He received his Ph.D. in astronomy in 1990 from Columbia University and was awarded the 1992 ASP Robert J. Trumpler Award for Outstanding North American Ph.D. Dissertation Research in Astronomy. He was then a NASA Edwin P. Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Colorado, and later a Lindheimer Fellow at Northwestern University. He was also a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton and a Raymond and Beverley Sackler Distinguished Visiting Astronomer at the University of Cambridge. He was honored first as the Siyuan Visiting Professor and later as the Yixing Visiting Chair Professor in the School of Astronomy and Space Science at Nanjing University, as a US Fulbright Scholar and a visiting professor at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, as a visiting professor at Tsung-Dao Lee Institute and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and a visiting Scientist, ASIAA/Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica.
His research is primarily on high-energy astrophysics. He is recognized for his pioneering work on X-ray mapping and spectroscopy of diffuse hot plasma in and around galaxies and for leading several major surveys of the Milky Way Galaxy center, using state-of-the-art telescopes. He was the principal investigator of many national and international research projects, including several large observing projects with the Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory, and XMM-Newton X-ray Observatory. He has (co-)authored 280+ research papers published in refereed journals (including four in Nature and one in Science as the lead author. His publication covers a broad range of topics: compact stars, supernova remnants, super bubbles, the hot circumgalactic and intergalactic media, starburst galaxies, and galactic nuclei and their environments. His current research focuses on the feedback and the ecosystem of galaxies and galactic nuclei. He mainly uses radio, infrared, ultraviolet, and X-ray observations to conduct these studies. He has also conducted theoretical and computational studies with his students and collaborators.