DISCOVERY OF ULTRA-FAST OUTFLOWS IN A SAMPLE OF BROAD-LINE RADIO GALAXIES OBSERVED WITH SUZAKU

By F. Tombesi, R. Sambruna, J. Reeves, V. Braito, L. Ballo, J. Gofford, M. Cappi, R. University, INAF-IASF Bologna, NasaGsfc and 4 more. 2010

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We present the results of a uniform and systematic search for blueshifted Fe K absorption lines in the X-ray spectra of five bright broad-line radio galaxies observed with Suzaku. We detect, for the first time in radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs) at X-rays, several absorption lines at energies greater than 7 keV in three out of five sources, namely, 3C 111, 3C 120, and 3C 390.3. The lines are detected with high significance according to both the F-test and extensive Monte Carlo simulations. Their likely interpretation as blueshifted Fe xxv and Fe xxvi K-shell resonance lines implies an origin from highly ionized gas outflowing with mildly relativistic velocities, in the range v ≃ 0.04–0.15c. A fit with specific photoionization models gives ionization parameters in the range log ξ ≃ 4–5.6 erg s−1 cm and column densities of NH ≃ 1022–1023 cm−2. These characteristics are very similar to those of the ultra-fast outflows (UFOs) previously observed in radio-quiet AGNs. Their estimated location within ∼0.01–0.3 pc of the central super-massive black hole suggests a likely origin related with accretion disk winds/outflows. Depending on the absorber covering fraction, the mass outflow rate of these UFOs can be comparable to the accretion rate and their kinetic power can correspond to a significant fraction of the bolometric luminosity and is comparable to their typical jet power. Therefore, these UFOs can play a significant role in the expected feedback from the AGN to the surrounding environment and can give us further clues on the relation between the accretion disk and the formation of winds/jets in both radio-quiet and radio-loud AGNs.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/195dea2d827750b6e69b1bd2169a57f320f8b915

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Citations in the corpus

Unification of X-ray winds in Seyfert galaxies: from ultra-fast outflows to warm absorbers (2012, background): “It is important to note that Tombesi et al. (2010b, 2011b, 2012b) detected the presence of UFOs also in a small sample of (3 out of 5) radio-loud AGNs observed with Suzaku.”
CLEARING OUT A GALAXY (2012, background): “This strongly suggests that AGN activity is what sweeps galaxies clear of their gas on a dynamical timescale and makes them red and dead.”
AGN wind scaling relations and the co-evolution of black holes and galaxies (2017, background): “The most powerful of these winds, observed in 20–40% of local AGN (e.g. Tombesi et al. 2010) and in a handful of higher redshift objects (e.g. Chartas et al. 2009; Lanzuisi et al. 2012), have extreme velocities (ultrafast outflows, UFOs, v 0.1-0.3c) and are made by highly ionised gas which can be…”
Energy, momentum and mass outflows and feedback from thick accretion discs around rotating black holes (2013, background): “Observations of starburst galaxies (e.g. McNamara et al. 2006), and midly relativistic winds in AGN (Tombesi et al. 2010a,b) confirm this picture.”
Gas expulsion by quasar-driven winds as a solution to the overcooling problem in galaxy groups and clusters (2010, background): “Indeed, there are already signs that such ‘quasar mode’ outflows are operating both at low and high redshift (see e.g. Moe et al. 2009; Dunn et al. 2010; Feruglio et al. 2010; Raimundo et al. 2010; Tombesi et al. 2010a,b).”
Mechanical AGN feedback: controlling the thermodynamical evolution of elliptical galaxies (2012, background): “…ISM mass (the active mass Mact, defined below) or perhaps that a wind originates from the accretion disc (Crenshaw, Kraemer & George 2003; Morganti et al. 2007; Nesvadba et al. 2008; Cappi et al. 2009; Cappi, Giustini & Tombesi 2011; Tombesi et al. 2010a,b, 2012; see also the references in G11a,b).”
The multi-phase winds of Markarian 231: from the hot, nuclear, ultra-fast wind to the galaxy-scale, molecular outflow (2015, methodology): “The mass outflow rate at rmin and rmax can then be estimated using: ṀUFO = 0.8πmpNUFOH vUFOr fg = 0.3 − 2.1 M yr−1 (5) where NUFOH = 2.7 × 1023 cm−2, and fg is a geometrical factor introduced by Krongold et al. (2007) and statistically estimated ∼ 2 by Tombesi et al. (2010).”
The Suzaku View of Highly Ionized Outflows in AGN. 1; Statistical Detection and Global Absorber Properties (2012, background): “Moreover, such outflows have also been detected in a small sample of local broad line radio galaxies (BLRGs; Tombesi et al. 2010b, hereafter T10B) which thus suggests that they may represent an important addition to the commonly held AGN unification model (e.g. Antonucci 1993; Urry & Padovani 1995).”
BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey. V. X-Ray Properties of the Swift/BAT 70-month AGN Catalog (2017, background): “The analysis of high-quality Suzaku and XMMNewton spectra has additionally pointed out that some objects also show highly ionized outflows with velocities exceeding 10,000 km s−1, the so-called ultra-fast outflows (e.g., Tombesi et al. 2010a,b; Gofford et al. 2013).”
Numerical simulations of super-critical black hole accretion flows in general relativity (2013, background): “This mode of accretion is observed in quiescent AGN and in the low/hard state of X-ray binaries.”