GOALS-JWST: Gas Dynamics and Excitation in NGC 7469 Revealed by NIRSpec

We present new JWST NIRSpec integral field spectroscopy (IFS) data for the luminous infrared galaxy NGC 7469, a nearby (70.6 Mpc) active galaxy with a Seyfert 1.5 nucleus that drives a highly ionized gas outflow and a prominent nuclear star-forming ring. Using the superb sensitivity and high spatial resolution of the JWST instrument NIRSpec IFS, we investigate the role of the Seyfert nucleus in the excitation and dynamics of the circumnuclear gas. Our analysis focuses on the [Fe ii], H2, and hydrogen recombination lines that trace the radiation/shocked-excited molecular and ionized interstellar medium around the active galactic nucleus (AGN). We investigate gas excitation through H2/Brγ and [Fe ii]/Paβ emission line ratios and find that photoionization by the AGN dominates within the central 300 pc of the galaxy except in a small region that shows signatures of shock-heated gas; these shock-heated regions are likely associated with a compact radio jet. In addition, the velocity field and velocity dispersion maps reveal complex gas kinematics. Rotation is the dominant feature, but we also identify noncircular motions consistent with gas inflows as traced by the velocity residuals and the spiral pattern in the Paα velocity dispersion map. The inflow is 2 orders of magnitude higher than the AGN accretion rate. The compact nuclear radio jet has enough power to drive the highly ionized outflow. This scenario suggests that the inflow and outflow are in a self-regulating feeding–feedback process, with a contribution from the radio jet helping to drive the outflow.

that trace the radiation/shocked-excited molecular and ionized ISM around the AGN.We investigate the gas excitation through H 2 /Brγ and [Fe ii]/Paβ emission line ratios and find that photoionization by the AGN dominates within the central 300 pc of the galaxy except in a small region that shows signatures of shock-heated gas; these shock-heated regions are likely associated with a compact radio jet.In addition, the velocity field and velocity dispersion maps reveal complex gas kinematics.Rotation is the dominant feature, but we also identify non-circular motions consistent with gas inflows as traced by the velocity residuals and the spiral pattern in the Paα velocity dispersion map.The inflow is two orders of magnitude higher than the AGN accretion rate.The compact nuclear radio jet has enough power to drive the highly ionized outflow.This scenario suggests that the inflow and outflow are in a self-regulating feeding-feedback process, with a contribution from the radio jet helping to drive the outflow.

INTRODUCTION
Luminous infrared galaxies (LIRGs) are systems with high infrared luminosities (L IR ≥ 10 11 L ⊙ ) that, in the nearby universe, are mostly major mergers (Sanders & Mirabel 1996).These galaxies host extreme environments where both starburst and nuclear activity play a significant role in shaping their evolution (e.g.Hekatelyne et al. 2020).Spatially resolved studies show that the gas excitation in LIRGs and their ultraluminous counterparts (ULIRGs, L IR ≥ 10 12 L ⊙ ) is governed by a mixture of processes typical of active galactic nuclei (AGN, sometimes hidden behind large amounts of dust with A V up to ∼ 40; U et al. 2019;Pérez-Torres et al. 2021), star-forming regions, and shocked gas (e.g.Rich et al. 2015;Hekatelyne et al. 2020).
NGC 7469 hosts a nuclear outflow traced by highly ionized gas as evidenced in the JWST MIRI MRS observations (U et al. 2022;Armus et al. 2023) and in the Near-IR via the [Si vi] 1.96µm emission line (Müller-Sánchez et al. 2011), and by the moderately ionized gas also traced by MIRI MRS (Zhang & Ho 2023).This outflow has an extent of 400-600 pc and affects mostly the region located between the nucleus and the ring, referred to as the inner interstellar medium (inner-ISM).The outflow has a stratified and decelerating structure as evidenced by highly blueshifted wings on the coronal emission lines (Armus et al. 2023).The warm molecular gas shows enhanced velocity dispersion to the northwest of the central AGN, suggestive of the presence of shocked gas (U et al. 2022).Considering the richness of physical phenomena in its inner kiloparsec region, NGC 7469 is an ideal target to investigate the AGN-starburst-ISM interaction.
In this paper, we report the morphology, kinematics, and excitation of the ionized atomic and hot (∼ 1000 K) molecular gas in the central region of NGC 7469 as observed by JWST (Rigby et al. 2023, and references therein) with the NIRSpec instrument in its integral field spectroscopy (IFS) mode.We describe the observations and data reduction in Section 2 and our results in Section 3. We discuss the kinematics and gas excitation in Section 4 and present our conclusions in Section 5.
2. DATA 2.1.JWST-NIRSpec Observations NGC 7469 was observed with the NIRSpec IFS (Böker et al. 2022;Jakobsen et al. 2022) on July 19th 2022 UT as part of the JWST Director Discretionary Time Early Release Science (DD-ERS) program (PID: 1328, PIs Lee Armus & Aaron Evans).We employed NIR-Spec in the high resolution mode (R ≈ 2700, corresponding to a velocity resolution of ≈ 110 km s −1 ) in three grating/filter combinations -G140H/F100LP, G235H/F170LP, G395H/F290LP -covering the wavelength range of 0.97 to 5.27µm with a nominal field of view (FoV) of 3 ′′ × 3 ′′ (see Figure 1).In order to fully cover the star-forming ring (∼ 4 ′′ across), we used the large cycling four-point dither pattern, which provides a FoV of 4.2 ′′ × 4.8 ′′ corresponding to 1.4 × 1.6 kpc 2 at the distance of NGC 7469 (Fig. 1).For extended targets, MSA leakage correction (leakcal) exposures are necessary to account for the leakage from the permanently open micro-shutters.While observing NGC 7469, we used the same dither pattern for the leakcals as we did for the science observations.The science exposure times in each grating/filter combination is 817 s and the total observing time, including the leakcals and overheads, is 10.5 ks.

Data reduction
We reduce the level-1 data downloaded from MAST using the JWST pipeline version 1.8.3 (Bushouse et al. 2022) in batch mode.The reference files follow the context version jwst 12027.pmap.The first reduction step is Detector1, which generates rate files with detector level correction applied to them.Both science and leakage calibration files are processed at the Detector1 step.The second reduction step for spectroscopic data is Spec2, which applies the distortion, wavelength, and flux calibrations, and other 2D corrections to the science data, including the leakage subtraction.
The outlier rejection algorithm is not efficient in the current version of the pipeline.Most of the outliers have fluxes higher than the typical flux of the brighter emission lines or show negative flux values.We opti-mized the outlier rejection by flagging spectral pixels that showed clear contamination in the calibrated science frames (Hutchison et al. 2023).These corrected frames are then fed to the last reduction step Spec3 that builds the data cubes by combining individual exposures taken at each dither position.We obtain three data cubes corresponding to each grating and filter combination: G140H/100LP, G235H/170LP and G395H/290LP.
In order to correct the pipeline-processed cubes for astrometry we adopt the peak of the continuum in each cube as the position of the nucleus.We then modify the NIRSpec-IFS data cube headers to align with the continuum peak of CH1-short MIRI-MRS cube.Our final datacubes have a spatial resolution of 0.14 ′′ at 1.12µm as obtained from the FWHM of the O i 1.12µm emission line image, allowing us to resolve structures down to ∼ 50 pc at this wavelength.The spatial resolution is poorer at longer wavelengths, as demonstrated by Lai et al. (2023) that measure a spatial resolution of 0.19 ′′ for the dust features at 3.3µm.

ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
The right panels of Fig. 1 show two spectra extracted from the nucleus (0.4 ′′ radius, in black) and from the star-forming ring (1 ′′ − 1.8 ′′ radii, in blue) in NGC 7469.In the nuclear spectrum, we detect prominent emission from the Hydrogen (H) recombination lines, particularly broad components in the Paschen series, and permitted lines such as O i and He ii.This broad component may be associated with the broad line region (BLR) of AGNs and is typical of type 1 sources.The nuclear spectrum also features coronal lines such as in [Si vii] and [Mg viii] with blueshifted profiles, similar to observations of higher ionization coronal lines from Armus et al. (2023), indicative of gas outflows.Narrow lines such as [Fe ii], H 2 , and the PAH band at 3.3µm are only weakly detected.The strong continuum radiation from the AGN might be the cause for the reduced equivalent width of these lines at the nucleus.On the other hand, PAH features and CO absorption bands are featured prominently in the ring spectrum, while coronal lines and the broad component of the H recombination lines disappear.We also see other ionized gas species such as [P ii] and [Fe ii], as well as various H 2 transitions in the ring.Tables 1, 2, 3 present the emission line integrated fluxes for each grating in both nuclear and ring extractions.The fluxes are obtained by fitting one, or two in the case of recombination and coronal lines, Gaussian functions to each line, and a polynomial to the continuum.Only the lines with at least a 3σ detection in each extraction are included.The fluxes of the 3.3µm PAH and aliphatic feature are part of our companion paper Lai For the present paper, we focus our analysis on a subset of the emission lines observed (i.e.[Fe ii], H 2 , and the H i lines) to highlight the conditions of the multiphase ISM.
Due to the under-sampling of the point spread function (PSF) in the NIRSpec IFS mode, the per-spaxel spectra in the nuclear region exhibit a wiggly pattern that is different from the fringes characteristic of 1d spectra extracted from MRS data.To mitigate this effect, we use a spectrum averaged over an aperture with a radius of 0.2 ′′ as representative of the nuclear region.The chosen aperture size is motivated by the size of the PSF.
In order to obtain emission line moment maps, we use the Python package IFSCUBE (Ruschel-Dutra & Dall'Agnol De Oliveira 2020;Ruschel-Dutra et al. 2021) to fit the emission lines of interest and with Gaussian functions and underlying continuum with a polynomial function in each spaxel of the data cube.We fit a broad component (σ ≈ 890 km s −1 at systemic velocity, corresponding to F W HM ≈ 2095 km s −1 in agreement with Lu et al. 2021)typical of Type 1 AGNs, and a narrow component to the hydrogen recombination lines.In the case of the Paα line, an extra component was necessary to reproduce the broad (σ ≈ 800 km s −1 ) emission line observed beyond the PSF extension, likely associated with a gas outflow.A single narrow component is enough to reproduce the emission line profiles of the forbidden and molecular hydrogen lines.A third-degree polynomial reproduced the underlying continuum at the gratings G140H and G235H.The fitting in each grating is performed independently, but within each grating, we tie the systemic velocity and velocity dispersion of the lines that trace the same gas phase.

Flux and Line Ratios
The resulting moment maps from our spectral fitting procedure for three emission lines representative of the atomic ionized -[Fe ii] 1.257µm and Paα -and the molecular gas -H 2 2.12µm -phases are shown in Figure 2.Both [Fe ii] and Paα have low ionization potentials, with IP = 7.9 eV and 13.6 eV, respectively, and the integrated flux maps show that they trace the star- forming ring and the point source at the nucleus.The ring has knots of star formation to the North, West, and South, but is fainter and more flocculent to the East of the nucleus.The 0. ′′ 2 resolution from NIRSpec, at 1.9µm, reveals a tail southeast of the nucleus in the inner ISM region that, in projection, connects the ring to the AGN as seen in the Paα flux map (see Fig. 2).The inner ISM region has surface brightness around an order of magnitude lower than the ring and the nucleus, indicating that the excitation/heating of the gas might be different in this region.The H 2 flux is more concentrated at the center where the peak of the emission is also observed.It does not show a ring-like pattern; instead, it displays a more extended and diffuse morphology, resembling a spiral arm to the Southwest as previously noticed in the warm molecular phase with MIRI (U et al. 2022) and cool CO gas (Davies et al. 2004).Both H 2 2.12µm and H 2 1.95µm fluxes have this distribution.
In order to investigate the origin of the gas emitted in the central region of NGC 7469, we create emission line ratio maps of H 2 /Brγ and [Fe ii] 1.257µm/Paβ (Fig. 3  the latter.The gray regions correspond to spaxels where at least one of the two lines in the ratio has a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) lower than 2. In the inner-ISM region, the low SNR spaxels are attributed to Paβ and Brγ nondetections.
The excitation diagram (Figure 3 (c)) shows data points based on the emission line ratios presented in panels (a) and (b).To distinguish among the different mechanisms that regulate these line ratios, we use the thresholds derived by Riffel et al. (2013), and color-code the spaxels depending on their location on the excitation diagram (panel (d)).These boundaries are derived from analyzing single-slit spectra of galaxies previously classified as starbursts, AGN hosts, or shock-dominated sources such as LINERS.The division between AGN low excitation (LE) and AGN high excitation (HE) is motivated by allowing for a finer sampling of the AGN influence on spatial scales.We use [Fe ii] 1.257µm / Paβ = 1 and H 2 2.12µm / Brγ = 2 as adopted by Riffel et al. (2021b) which are arbitrary.
Since the recombination lines have low fluxes at the inner-ISM region and the H 2 is detected at the same region, we expect high line ratios in the western part of the nucleus.The blue box overlaid in the line ratio maps indicates the region where we extracted average spectra for the G140H and G235H gratings.From these spectra, we obtain upper limits for the Brγ and Paβ emission lines.The ratios are then obtained using the flux per spaxel from our H 2 and [Fe ii] maps and are plotted on the excitation diagram as stars indicating they are lower limits on the H 2 2.12µm/Brγ ratio.
Applying the color-coding from the excitation diagram to the excitation map (Figure 3 panel (d)), we find that the spaxels with the largest flux ratios are consistent with photoionization by the AGN.A small number of spaxels may be shock excited.The inner ISM region has line ratios consistent excitation by the AGN radiation field and by shocks.With the exception of the starforming ring itself, the bulk of the ISM probed by the NIRSpec IFS is photoionized by the AGN.

Velocity and velocity dispersion
In the [Fe ii] 1.257µm, Paα and H 2 2.1218µm velocity fields (middle row of Figure 2), rotation is the dominant feature, with amplitudes of up to 150 km s −1 .The rotating disk of hot H 2 we measure was first detected with adaptive optics spectroscopy on the Keck telescope (Hicks & Malkan 2008).That study found similar rotation velocities to what we see: 100 km s −1 or more out to a radius of about 0.8 ′′ , almost reaching the starburst ring.Small-scale kinematic features are also observed as excess blueshifts to the southeast and redshifts to the northwest of the nucleus.The velocity field for Paβ (not presented here) shows very similar kinematics and gas distribution as those of Paα, although with a lower SNR.
The velocity dispersion maps show some interesting features previously seen at lower resolution in the MIRI-MRS data (U et al. 2022).The ring and outer parts have low dispersion values (∼ 60 − 80 km s −1 ) indicating that they are dominated by rotation.In the inner ISM region, we see differences between the gas species.The [Fe ii] velocity dispersion map shows an arc-shaped structure with the highest values (σ ≈ 140 km s −1 ) to the west of the nucleus.For the Paα we also see arc-shaped structures peaking in two different regions, to the northeast and southwest of the nucleus, with a dual-spiral pattern.Each of the spirals is located ∼ 0.6 ′′ (≈ 200 pc) away from the nucleus.We investigate the nature of this feature in Section 4.2.The H 2 velocity dispersion map displays higher values (σ ≈ 120 km s −1 ) extending 0.9 ′′ northwest of the nucleus.This feature is also seen in the H 2 1.95µm velocity dispersion map (not presented here).The fan-shaped feature is consistent with the regions of enhanced H 2 dispersion seen with MIRI-MRS (U et al. 2022) but at a higher spatial resolution.
One way of investigating the non-rotational motions is by fitting the velocity fields with a rotating disk model that assumes the gas particles have circular orbits.We adopt the model described by the following equation (Bertola et al. 1991): where V sys is the systemic velocity of the galaxy, R is the distance of each pixel to the center of rotation, A is the velocity amplitude, ψ is the position angle of each spaxel, ψ 0 is the PA of the line of the nodes, i.e. the kinematical major axis, and θ is the inclination of the disk.The parameter p is the slope of the rotation curve, varying from 1 for an asymptotically flat rotation curve to 1.5 for a system with finite mass, and C 0 is the concentration parameter, the radius where the velocity reaches 70% of the velocity amplitude.
We fit this model to the Paα velocity field as this emission line has the most interesting structure.The fitting is performed using the non-linear least-square minimization routine mpfit2dfun (Markwardt 2009).The combination of parameters that best describe the velocity field are A = 476.9± 6.09 km s −1 , V sys = 13.29 ± 0.41 km s −1 and C 0 = 0.53 ± 0.01 arcsec, ψ 0 = 128.81• ± 0.38 and θ = 15.97 • ± 0.28.The position of the center of rotation is adopted as the position of the nucleus, and p = 1.5 are fixed during the fitting.Previous studies have estimated similar values for Ψ 0 (Davies et al. 2004; Hicks

Gas excitation
Emission line diagnostic diagrams are powerful tools to investigate the origin of emission lines in galaxies.In the near-IR, empirical diagrams involving bright lines in the J and K bands have been analyzed in singleaperture (Larkin et al. 1998;Reunanen et al. 2002;Rodríguez-Ardila et al. 2004, 2005;Riffel et al. 2013)  and spatially resolved studies (Colina et al. 2015;U et al. 2019;Riffel et al. 2021a).The H 2 can be excited by soft-UV photon absorption (non-thermal) or by collisional excitation (thermal).The thermal processes include shocks (Hollenbach & McKee 1989;Riffel et al. 2015), and X-ray heating by the AGN radiation field.The [Fe ii] is produced in the partially ionized region that, in AGN hosts, is a byproduct of X-rays or shocks due to the radio jet or gas outflows (Simpson et al. 1996;Forbes & Ward 1993).Another source of excitation of the [Fe ii] is due to shocks caused by supernovae remnants, especially in star-forming regions (Rosenberg et al. 2012).Previous studies show that there is a correlation between H 2 /Brγ and [Fe ii]1.257µm/Paβ,suggesting that both [Fe ii] and H 2 may have a common excitation mechanism (Larkin et al. 1998;Riffel et al. 2013Riffel et al. , 2021a)).A positive trend is observed in Figure 3 (c), suggesting that in NGC 7469 [Fe ii] and H 2 are excited by a common mechanism.
The excitation map (Figure 3 (d)) shows the spatial distribution of the different line ratios.At the location of the ring, the excitation conditions show a discontinuity to the east, where AGN-like excitation dominates.A morphological discontinuity in the ring, at the same location, has previously been claimed as the result of an outflow-excavated ring (García-Bernete et al. 2022).However, we do not see clear velocity signatures consistent with outflowing gas in the spectral transitions we analyze here.
The highest line ratios (color-coded as red and orange) are distributed mostly in the western part of the inner-ISM.These line ratios are indicative of shock-excited gas at the same location as in the MIRI-MRS observations of NGC 7469 (U et al. 2022).The authors linked the shock-excited H 2 with the fan-shaped H 2 S(5) ve-locity dispersion map.The lower right panel in Fig. 2 shows a more clumpy structure than in H 2 S(5).Shock models suggest that regions with fast motions would be expected in a clumpy turbulent medium (Appleton et al. 2023).Thus, the high-velocity dispersion and the shocklike line ratios are indicators of the same shocked gas structure at the western part of the inner-ISM.
NGC 7469 has a compact radio jet-core structure that extends east-west for ∼100 pc, which has been resolved with VLBI observations (Lonsdale et al. 2003;Alberdi et al. 2006) and high-resolution VLA observations (Orienti & Prieto 2010; Song et al. 2022) at multiple frequencies.[Fe ii] is likely excited by shocks due to the interaction of the jet with the ISM in the regions colorcoded in orange in Figure 3.However, excitation by the AGN radiation field cannot be ruled out, as the jet is compact and line ratios consistent with excitation by the AGN are observed over all the FoV.The ring does show line ratios typical of star-forming galaxies, where non-thermal processes (UV-fluorescence) might be the mechanism responsible for the H 2 excitation.The [Fe ii] emission observed in the SF ring is likely due to shocks caused by supernovae where the dust grains trapping the Fe are destroyed by the supernova remnant shocks (Rosenberg et al. 2012).

Gas dynamics: inflows and the feedback driving mechanism
In Figure 2, the velocity dispersion of Paα shows a dual spiral pattern, which also appears to exhibit enhanced H 2 /Brγ and [Fe ii]/Paβ ratios.With optical observations of the AGN host Mrk 590, Raimundo et al. (2019) observe a nuclear dual spiral pattern in the velocity dispersion and flux maps of optical ionized gas emission lines.The authors interpret this pattern as due to a gas inflow to the nucleus of the galaxy.Another example of a nuclear dual spiral is interpreted as a gas inflow in NGC 6951 (Storchi-Bergmann et al. 2007).In the case of NGC 7469, the hypothesis of an inner dual spiral was proposed by Davies et al. (2004) to explain the morphology of the CO(2-1) flux distribution.However, the authors did not find kinematic signatures that could be associated with a gas inflow.In magneto-hydrodynamical simulations, stellar feedback from a star-forming ring provides the fuel for gas inflows that star and sustain the AGN-duty cycle (Clavijo-Bohórquez et al. 2023), which is probably the case in NGC 7469.We investigate possible deviations from pure circular rotation by inspecting the velocity residuals in Figure 4 (c).The resolving power of NIRSpec IFU at the wavelength of the Paα line is R ≈ 2200 (Jakobsen et al. 2022), which corresponds to a velocity resolution of ≈ 130 km s −1 .the residuals are more prominent closer to the nuclear spiral, reaching 64 km s −1 in blueshifts and patchy and with lower amplitudes in the outer regions of the field.The localized nature of the highest residuals in arm-shaped morphology leads us to interpret them as a signature of gas inflow.Similar approaches have been adopted in the literature previously (e.g.Schnorr-Müller et al. 2016, 2017;Riffel et al. 2023a).
If we indeed are observing inspiraling gas, we follow Storchi-Bergmann et al. (2007) and compute the mass inflow rate via Ṁin = N e V in Am p f n arms , where N e is the electron density, V in is the velocity of the inflowing gas, A is the area of the cross-section of the spiral arm, m p is proton mass, f is the filling factor and n arms is the number of arms (in our case: n arms = 2).We estimate the filling factor considering that where L Paα and j P aα (T ) are the luminosity and emission coefficient of the Paα line (Osterbrock & Ferland 2006), and v is the volume of the emitting region.Assuming a typical density of 500 cm −3 and a temperature of 10,000 K, we determine j Paα = 8.29 × 10 −22 erg cm −3 s −1 .The Paα luminoisity is estimated from the flux map in Fig. 2 as 2.4 × 10 41 erg s −1 .Since most of the Paα emission is associated with the star-forming ring, we assume that half of the line flux comes from the gas inflowing to center as L Paα = 1.2 × 10 41 erg s −1 .Assuming that the inflowing gas is distributed in a dualspiral structure where one of the arms can be represented by a cylinder of height h = 1.5 ′′ and radius r = 0.3 ′′ , the filling factor is f = 0.14.This value is higher than previously estimated in the nearby Seyfert galaxy NGC 6951 f = 0.004 (Storchi-Bergmann et al. 2007).The mass inflow calculation adopts both filling factor values.The velocity is corrected by the inclination of the galaxy (V in = Vres sin i ).From the rotation model residuals (Fig. 4, panel (c)) V res ≈ 40km s −1 .We consider two possible inclinations for NGC 7469: i = 16 • derived from the rotation model, and i = 51 • the inclination of the ring (U et al. 2022).The deprojected inflow velocity is V in = 51 − 145 km s −1 .
Considering all the assumptions mentioned above, the mass inflow rate is Ṁin = 0.2−17 M ⊙ yr −1 .This value is comparable to the mass outflow rate estimated from the coronal emission lines (Müller-Sánchez et al. 2011;Armus et al. 2023, 1 − 5 M ⊙ yr −1 ).The mass inflow rate is at least one order of magnitude larger than the accretion rate needed to power the AGN (∼ 4.1 × 10 −2 M ⊙ yr −1 ; Armus et al. 2023).Part of the gas mass moving towards the center might not feed to the supermassive black hole and could, in fact, be ejected as part of the outflow.
The fitting of the brightest hydrogen recombination line observed in NGC 7469 NIRSpec IFU data reveals the presence of a compact (R = 0.6 ′′ ≡ 205 pc), high dispersion (σ = 800 km s −1 ) at systemic velocity (V = 11 km s −1 ) component.We interpret this component as an outflow, as is expected from the presence of gas outflows in highly (Müller-Sánchez et al. 2011;Armus et al. 2023) and moderately (Xu & Wang 2022) ionized gas in this galaxy.In order to investigate the impact of this outflow in the galaxy, we proceed to calculate the mass outflow rates following two different methods.The first follows equation 4 in Bianchin et al. (2022) (see also Harrison et al. 2014;Fiore et al. 2017;Kakkad et al. 2020;Riffel et al. 2023b).The ionized outflow gas mass (M out ≈ 10 6 M ⊙ ) is obtained by adapting the equation 5 from Storchi-Bergmann et al. (2009) where F Paα /F Brγ = 12.19, assuming the case B of recombination B recombination, a temperature of 10,000 K and an electron density of 500 cm −3 .The resulting mass outflow rate is Ṁout = 0.18 M ⊙ yr −1 .The second method follows Müller-Sánchez et al. ( 2011); Armus et al. (2023), we use the same electron density as in the first method, and a filling factor f = 0.001.Instead of the biconical geometry adopted by Armus et al. (2023), we adopt a spherical geometry due to the lack of evidence of a biconical structure in the outflow.The resulting mass outflow following this method is Ṁout = 0.14 M ⊙ yr −1 , in good agreement with the previous method.This mass outflow is consistent with the values derived from the analysis of the outflows traced by the Paβ emission line in local Seyferts (Bianchin et al. 2022).
The mechanical impact of the outflow in the ISM can be accessed via its kinetic power determined by Ėout = Ṁout (V 2 max +3σ 2 )/2.The σ 2 term is particularly important for this case, as most of the energy is associated with turbulent motions.Adopting the velocity, velocity dispersion, and mass outflow rates determined previously, Ėout = 5.9 − 7.2 × 10 36 erg s −1 .In order to determine if the small-scale radio jet-core structure is capable of driving the highly ionized gas outflow, we follow Morganti et al. (2015) and Venturi et al. (2021) and adopted the scaling relations between 1.4 GHz radio luminosity and jet power presented in Bîrzan et al. (2008) and Cavagnolo et al. (2010).The jet component has flux density of 9.4 mJy at 8 GHz (Alberdi et al. 2006), and 1.3 mJy at 33 GHz (Song et al. 2022), which yield a 8 − 33 GHz spectral index of α ∼ −1.4 and an extrapolated 1.4 GHz flux density of ∼ 120 mJy.This value would be lowered to 40 mJy if a nominal synchrotron spectral index of α NT = −0.8 is assumed between 1.4 and 8 GHz.Using the scaling relations, these values correspond to kinetic jet power of 0.6 − 3 × 10 43 erg s −1 .As noted in Venturi et al. (2021), jet power may be underestimated by an order of magnitude using the above scaling relations compared to values derived from models of jet-ISM interaction (e.g.Mukherjee et al. 2018).The kinetic power of the outflow is several orders of magnitude smaller than the jet power implying that the jet can perturb the gas in its vicinity, increasing its turbulence and thus being the main of the low velocity and high dispersion outflow observed in the Paα emission line.

SUMMARY
In this paper, we report the JWST NIRSpec-IFS observations of NGC 7469.With the superb spatial and spectral resolutions of NIRSpec, it is now possible to study in detail the inner kiloparsec of this galaxy.This allows us to unveil the intricate connection between the feeding, feedback, and gas excitation in the inner kiloparsec of this luminous Sy 1.5 galaxy.Our conclusions are summarized below.
• Enhanced line ratios, consistent with shock-heated gas, are observed mostly in the nuclear region of the galaxy, with the highest line ratios to the west of the nucleus.The presence of a compact (< 100 pc) radio jet (e.g.Lonsdale et al. 2003) indicates that its interaction with the gas in the inner-ISM region may be the cause of the H 2 and [Fe ii] gas excitation.The spatially resolved excitation map also reveals diffuse AGN-like excitation over the field of view suggesting that the central source ionizes a significant fraction of the gas in the inner ISM.
• NGC 7469 kinematics is dominated by rotation (with amplitudes ∼ 150 km s −1 at low-velocity dispersion (60 − 80 km s −1 ), especially in the starforming ring region.We identify a nuclear spiral in NGC 7469 in the Paα velocity dispersion map.We interpret the nuclear spiral and the nonrotational motions (observed after modeling the rotation field) as a gas inflow to the nucleus of the galaxy.We estimate a mass inflow rate of 0.2 − 17 M ⊙ yr −1 dependent upon the precise geometry and inclination of the disk.This value is up to two orders of magnitude higher than the gas accretion rate needed to power the central AGN but comparable with the mass outflow rate.
• The Paα emission line has a kinematical component consistent with an ionized gas outflow.This outflow is dominated by turbulent motions.It carries a kinetic power of 5.9−7.2×10 36erg s −1 which is consistent with being driven by the compact nuclear radio jet with a power of 10 43 erg s −1 .acknowledges support from NASA through ADAP award 80NSSC19K1096.This work was also partly supported by the Spanish program Unidad de Excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2020-001058-M, financed by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033.Finally, this research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.Software: Astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013, 2018, 2022), IFSCUBE (Ruschel-Dutra & Dall'Agnol De Oliveira 2020;Ruschel-Dutra et al. 2021), JWST Science Calibration (Bushouse et al. 2022), Matplotlib (Hunter 2007), QFitsView (Ott 2012), SciPy (Virtanen et al. 2020).

Figure 1 .
Figure1.Left: HST (F110W) and JWST (F150W and F200W) color composite image of NGC 7469(Bohn et al. 2023).North is up and East to the left as indicated by the compass in the bottom left.Bright stellar clusters are detected throughout the starburst ringThe cyan rectangle indicates the combined FoV of our dithered NIRSpec observations (4.2 ′′ ×4.8 ′′ ). 1 ′′ corresponds to 330 pc at the distance of the galaxy.The right panels show extracted NIRSpec spectra from the nucleus with a radius of 0.4 arcsec (black) and the star formating ring with inner and outer radius of 1 arcsec and 1.8 arcsec (blue).These extractions correspond to the black-filled circle and the dashed blue annulus in the galaxy image.The red, orange, and light blue lines indicate the location of the high ionization (coronal), the ionized, and molecular emission lines, respectively.The spectra were arbitrarily scaled for visualization purposes to differentiate between the nuclear and the star-forming ring spectra.The first shows the broad lines, typical of Type 1 nuclei, in the permitted emission lines as the Hydrogen and Helium recombination lines, high ionization coronal lines indicated by the red markers, and other emission lines as [Fe ii] and H2.The latter is dominated by narrow lines, a prominent PAH feature at 3.3µm and the aliphatic at 3.4µm, CO stellar absorption features, and a CO2 absorption.etal. (2023), which discusses the dust grain distribution in NGC 7469 in detail.For the present paper, we focus our analysis on a subset of the emission lines observed (i.e.[Fe ii], H 2 , and the H i lines) to highlight the conditions of the multiphase ISM.

Figure 2 .
Figure2.Flux (top row, in erg s −1 cm −2 , logarithmic scale), velocity (middle row, in km s −1 ) and velocity dispersion (bottom row, in km s −1 ) of three emission lines: [Fe ii] 1.257µm, Paα and H2 2.1218µm.The cross indicates the position of the nucleus across all the panels.North is up and East to left.A connection between the ring and the nucleus, to the southeast of the latter, is observed in the Paα flux map.The gas motions are dominated by rotation, but non-circular motions also contribute to the gas dynamics as evidenced by the excesses of blueshift and redshifts to the southeast and northwest of the nucleus, respectively, and regions with enhanced velocity dispersion close to the nucleus, but with different morphologies for the three emission lines.The locations of the enhanced velocity dispersion are signatures of gas disturbed by the outflow, for [Fe ii] and H2, or gas heated by friction in an inflow, for the Paα.See Sec.4.2 for the discussion.
, panels (a) and (b)) which are insensitive to extinction.The ring shows low line ratio values of ∼ 0.5 for both H 2 /Brγ and [Fe ii] 1.257µm/Paβ.The H 2 /Brγ has the highest values (∼ 3.5) at the nucleus and in the western inner ISM region.The [Fe ii]/Paβ is also the highest in

Figure 3 .
Figure 3. Line ratio diagnostics in the near-IR: H2 2.1218µm/Brγ (a) and [Fe ii] 1.257µm/Paβ (b).Given that the Paβ and Brγ lines in the inner-ISM region are only marginally detected (SNR< 2), lower limits of the H2/Brγ and [Fe ii]/Paβ ratios are estimated using the values inside the blue boxes and presented as the star symbols in the near-IR excitation diagnostic diagram (c).The bottom panels show the near-IR excitation diagram ((c); adapted from Riffel et al. 2013) and the corresponding spatial location of spaxels dominated by different excitation (d).The spaxels are color-coded by their location on the excitation diagram: star formation (SF), AGN low excitation (LE), AGN high excitation (HE), and shocks.The line ratios encompass the complexity of the gas excitation in the inner kiloparsec of NGC 7469, where evidence of star formation and, the AGN radiation field and high excitation due to shocks are present.The typical uncertainties in both line ratios are indicated in the top right corner of panel (c).& Malkan 2008; U et al. 2022) and θ (Hicks & Malkan 2008).Figure4shows the modeled velocity field in panel (b), and the residual velocity map, with the position angle of the galaxy's major kinematic axis marked by the black dashed line, in panel (c).The Near and Far side indicate the orientation of the star-forming ring proposed by U et al. (2022) and by the optical large-scale image of the galaxy.We observe most of the velocity residuals as blueshifts on the far side of the galaxy.Such a con-

Figure 4
figuration may represent streaming motions toward the center.

Figure 4 .
Figure 4. (Left to right) Observed Paα velocity field, modeled velocity field with rotation described by a thin disk model, and the residual map from the difference between the observed and modeled velocity fields.The dashed line indicates the direction of the galaxy's kinematic major axis.The Near and Far sides of the disk are labeled, and the arrows indicate the location of gas that does not follow the galactic rotation and may be inflowing to the nucleus.The contours show the regions of increased velocity dispersion in Paα.

Table 1 .
Emission Line Fluxes in the nucleus and SF ring in the G140H grating.

Table 2 .
Emission Line Flux Densities in the nucleus and SF ring in the G235H grating.

Table 3 .
Emission Line Flux Densities in the nucleus and SF ring in the G395H grating.