Energetic galaxy-wide outflows in high-redshift ultraluminous infrared galaxies hosting AGN activity

By C. Harrison, D. M. Alexander, A. M. Swinbank, I. Smail, S. Alaghband-Zadeh, F. E. Bauer, S. Chapman, A. Moro, R. Hickox, R. Ivison and 3 more. 2012

168 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present integral field spectroscopy observations, covering the [O iii] λλ4959, 5007 emission-line doublet of eight high-redshift (z = 1.4–3.4) ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) that host active galactic nucleus (AGN) activity, including known submillimetre luminous galaxies. The targets have moderate radio luminosities that are typical of high-redshift ULIRGs (L1.4 GHz = 1024–1025 W Hz−1) and therefore are not radio-loud AGNs. We decouple kinematic components due to the galaxy dynamics and mergers from those due to outflows. We find evidence in the four most luminous systems ( erg s−1) for the signatures of large-scale energetic outflows: extremely broad [O iii] emission (full width at half-maximum ≈ 700–1400 km s−1) across ≈4–15 kpc, with high velocity offsets from the systemic redshifts (up to ≈850 km s−1). The four less luminous systems have lower quality data displaying weaker evidence for spatially extended outflows. We estimate that these outflows are potentially depositing energy into their host galaxies at considerable rates (–1045 erg s−1); however, due to the lack of constraints on the density of the outflowing material and the structure of the outflow, these estimates should be taken as illustrative only. Based on the measured maximum velocities (vmax ≈ 400–1400 km s−1) the outflows observed are likely to unbind some fraction of the gas from their host galaxies, but are unlikely to completely remove gas from the galaxy haloes. By using a combination of energetic arguments and a comparison to ULIRGs without clear evidence for AGN activity, we show that the AGN activity could be the dominant power source for driving all of the observed outflows, although star formation may also play a significant role in some of the sources.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/59498db13849b230071820aafed298826515a194

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. D. M. Alexander
4. R. Somerville
5. R. Dav'e
6. A. Dekel
7. T. Naab
8. P. V. van Dokkum

In Instrumentation

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. A. Dekel
4. P. V. van Dokkum
5. R. Somerville
6. R. Dav'e
7. T. Naab
8. D. M. Alexander

Citations in the corpus

• Ionised outflows in z $\sim$ 2.4 quasar host galaxies (2015, background): “…2014; Rodríguez Zaurín et al. 2014; Aalto et al. 2015; Feruglio et al. 2015) and at high redshift (e.g. Alexander et al. 2010; Nesvadba et al. 2011; Harrison et al. 2012; Maiolino et al. 2012; CanoDíaz et al. 2012; Harrison et al. 2014; Cresci et al. 2015; Cicone et al. 2015) in ionised, atomic…”
• The multi-phase winds of Markarian 231: from the hot, nuclear, ultra-fast wind to the galaxy-scale, molecular outflow (2015, background): “…ionized and neutral gas with similar velocities is found on galactic scale (1-30 kpc) in a few tens AGN from the local Universe up to z=2-3 (Cano-Diaz et al. 2012, Rupke & Veilleux 2011, 2013; Harrison et al. 2014; Nesvadba et al. 2008; Harrison et al. 2012; Genzel et al. 2014, Cresci et al. 2015).”
• Quasar feedback and the origin of radio emission in radio-quiet quasars (2014, background): “…specific examples of black-hole-driven winds have now been identified using a variety of observational techniques, both at low and at high redshifts (Nesvadba et al. 2006; Arav et al. 2008; Nesvadba et al. 2008; Moe et al. 2009; Dunn et al. 2010; Alexander et al. 2010; Harrison et al. 2012).”
• THE KMOS3D SURVEY: DESIGN, FIRST RESULTS, AND THE EVOLUTION OF GALAXY KINEMATICS FROM 0.7 ⩽ z ⩽ 2.7 (2014, background): “Outflows are observed to be ubiquitous at high redshift from star formation and AGN (Nesvadba et al. 2008, 2011; Weiner et al. 2009; Shapiro et al. 2009; Steidel et al. 2010; Nestor et al. 2011; Harrison et al. 2012; Newman et al. 2012; Förster Schreiber et al. 2014; Genzel et al. 2014b).”
• X-shooter reveals powerful outflows in z ∼ 1.5 X-ray selected obscured quasi-stellar objects (2014, methodology): “…barrier and characterise the neutral and ionised kinematic components of luminous high-z quasars by sampling the redshifted optical lines in c© 2002 RAS, MNRAS 000, 1–?? the NIR band (e.g., Alexander et al. 2010; Cano-Díaz et al. 2012; Maiolino et al. 2012; Harrison et al. 2012b, hereinafter H12).”
• Observations of feedback from radio-quiet quasars – II. Kinematics of ionized gas nebulae (2013, background): “Even in the ultraluminous infrared galaxies at high redshift, which are massive mergers whose gas dynamics is expected to be most disturbed of all, the observed maximal width of [O III] and Hα emission lines is W80 550 km s−1 (Alaghband-Zadeh et al. 2012; Harrison et al. 2012).”
• Massive molecular outflows and evidence for AGN feedback from CO observations (2013, background): “…et al. 2013; Emonts et al. 2005; Morganti et al. 2003, 2005; Martin 2005; Soto et al. 2012; Rodríguez Zaurín et al. 2013) and at high redshift (e.g. Harrison et al. 2012; Cano-Díaz et al. 2012; Diamond-Stanic et al. 2012; Bradshaw et al. 2013; Alexander et al. 2010; Maiolino et al. 2012), the…”
• EVIDENCE FOR WIDE-SPREAD ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS-DRIVEN OUTFLOWS IN THE MOST MASSIVE z ∼ 1–2 STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2014, background): “…AGN feedback has been observed in the so-called quasar mode in broad absorption line quasars (Arav et al. 2001, 2008, 2013; Korista et al. 2008), in type 2 AGNs (Alexander et al. 2010; Nesvadba et al. 2011; Cano Dı́az et al. 2012; Harrison et al. 2012), and in radio galaxies (Nesvadba et al. 2008).”
• The dark nemesis of galaxy formation : why hot haloes trigger black hole growth and bring star formation to an end (2016, background): “Observational measurements of energetic outflows and radio jets from galaxy nuclei (eg., Harrison et al. 2012; Maiolino et al. 2012; Fabian et al. 2003) indeed suggest that black holes play an important role in galaxy formation, most likely by heating the surrounding gas corona, offsetting cooling…”
• Discovery of extreme [O III] λ5007 Å outflows in high-redshift red quasars (2015, methodology): “…U niversity of B ath on June 1, 2016 http://m nras.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from 5 µm luminosities are calculated by power-law interpolating between closest adjacent mid-infrared flux measurements (Spitzer for objects from Brusa et al. 2015 and Harrison et al. 2012 and WISE for the rest).”
• AGN wind scaling relations and the co-evolution of black holes and galaxies (2017, background): “…Nesvadba et al. 2006, 2008; Alexander et al. 2010; Rupke & Veilleux 2011; Riffel & Storchi-Bergmann 2011; Cano-Diaz et al. 2012; Greene et al. 2012; Harrison et al. 2012, 2014; Liu et al. 2013a,b; Cimatti et al. 2013; Tadhunter et al. 2014; Genzel et al. 2014; Brusa et al. 2015a; Cresci et al.…”
• Narrow-line region gas kinematics of 24 264 optically selected AGN: the radio connection (2013, background): “Most observational evidence for galaxy-scale outflows has so far been based on pointed observations of a handful of objects (e.g. Nesvadba et al. 2006, 2008; Alexander et al. 2010; Rosario et al. 2010; Greene et al. 2011; Harrison et al. 2012).”
• BULGE GROWTH AND QUENCHING SINCE z = 2.5 IN CANDELS/3D-HST (2014, background): “Observationally, there is increasing evidence for AGN-driven outflows of massive z ∼ 1 − 3 galaxies (Förster Schreiber et al. 2013; Nesvadba et al. 2011; Harrison et al. 2012; Cano-Dı́az et al. 2012).”
• Kiloparsec-scale outflows are prevalent among luminous AGN: outflows and feedback in the context of the overall AGN population (2014, background): “This is consistent with other studies that have shown that luminous AGN can have emission-line regions up to tens of kiloparsecsin size (e.g., Bennert et al. 2002; Humphrey et al. 2010; Greenet al. 2011; Schirmer et al. 2013; Harrison et al. 2012; Husemann etal.”
• The Coevolution of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes: Insights from Surveys of the Contemporary Universe (2014, background): “Harrison et al. (2012a) reach similar conclusions.”
• Ionized gas outflows and global kinematics of low-z luminous star-forming galaxies (2014, background): “Recently, IFS studies are starting to characterize ionized gas outflows at high-z (Shapiro et al. 2008; Newman et al. 2012; Harrison et al. 2012; Swinbank et al. 2012; Förster Schreiber et al. 2014), providing intriguing relations between their properties and the characteristics of their galaxy…”