Mapping Gas Accretion and Stellar Kinematics to Subkiloparsec Scales in NGC 4696 with JWST/NIRSpec

We present JWST/NIRSpec Integral Field Unit spectroscopy of the central 618 × 618 pc 2 (∼3″ × 3″) of NGC 4696, the brightest cluster galaxy in the Centaurus cluster. Leveraging the ∼ 0 . ″ 1 (20.6 pc) pixel size of JWST, we resolve a compact rotating circumnuclear disk (CND) (radius of ∼120 pc) traced by Pa α and H 2 1 − 0 S(1) emission, which allows a reassessment of the active galactic nucleus position based on the kinematic center of this disk. A central Pa α velocity dispersion reaching σ ∼ 449 km s −1 implies an SMBH mass of ∼10 9 M ⊙ , corresponding to a sphere of influence of r inf ∼ 60 pc, resolved by our observations. Position–velocity diagrams reveal an increase from ∼−200 to ∼600 km s −1 on scales of ∼150 pc (a gradient of 4.7 km s −1 pc −1 ) and an accretion rate of ∼18 M ⊙ yr −1 feeding the CND. The Pa α emission shows a double component in the core, with a high-dispersion redshifted component reaching σ ∼ 600 km s −1 . In contrast, MUSE H α observations covering the ∼10 kpc-scale filamentary structure recover only weak velocity gradients (≲150 km s −1 ) within ∼300 × 300 pc 2 and do not resolve the disk due to larger point-spread functions and pixel sizes. Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array CO(2–1) data reveal only compact molecular clumps within a ∼410 × 410 pc 2 region, with no extended counterpart to the structures traced by Pa α and H 2 1 − 0 S(1). Stellar kinematics show a smooth velocity field and broad dispersion profile, clearly decoupled from both the multiphase gas and the hot intracluster medium probed by XRISM. These results provide a direct, spatially resolved view of gas dynamics within the inner few hundred parsecs, demonstrating the power of JWST/NIRSpec to probe SMBH feeding.