Observations of feedback from radio-quiet quasars – II. Kinematics of ionized gas nebulae

By Guilin Liu, N. Zakamska, Jenny E. Greene, N. Nesvadba, Xin Liu. 2013

256 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The prevalence and energetics of quasar feedback is a major unresolved problem in galaxy formation theory. In this paper, we present Gemini Integral Field Unit observations of ionized gas around eleven luminous, obscured, radio-quiet quasars at z~0.5 out to ~15 kpc from the quasar; specifically, we measure the kinematics and morphology of [O III]5007 emission. The round morphologies of the nebulae and the large line-of-sight velocity widths (with velocities containing 80% of the emission as high as 1000 km/s combined with relatively small velocity difference across them (from 90 to 520 km/s) point toward wide-angle quasi-spherical outflows. We use the observed velocity widths to estimate a median outflow velocity of 760 km/s, similar to or above the escape velocities from the host galaxies. The line-of-sight velocity dispersion declines slightly toward outer parts of the nebulae (by 3% per kpc on average). The majority of nebulae show blueshifted excesses in their line profiles across most of their extents, signifying gas outflows. For the median outflow velocity, we find a kinetic energy flow between 4x10^{44} and 3x10^{45} erg/s and mass outflow rate between 2000 and 20000 Msun/yr. These values are large enough for the observed quasar winds to have a significant impact on their host galaxies. The median rate of converting bolometric luminosity to kinetic energy of ionized gas clouds is ~2%. We report four new candidates for "super-bubbles" -- outflows that may have broken out of the denser regions of the host galaxy.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/852e1777756118c439e5c1dcdf08b24430c2643d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Instrumentation

Citations in the corpus

Impact of supermassive black hole growth on star formation (2017, background): “Similar arguments have also been made for more typical AGN host galaxies using a variety of gas tracers[55, 51].”
Discovery of extreme [O III] λ5007 Å outflows in high-redshift red quasars (2015, methodology): “If obscuration makes any of the near- and mid-infrared emission anisotropic, as is suspected to be the case in low-redshift type 2 quasars (Liu et al. 2013b), then the true bolometric luminosities of our targets are even higher.”
simba: Cosmological simulations with black hole growth and feedback (2019, background): “…progress has been rapid, showing that AGN can drive molecular and ionised outflows with velocities of ∼ 1000 km s−1 or more (Sturm et al. 2011; Greene et al. 2012; Maiolino et al. 2012; Liu et al. 2013; Perna et al. 2017a), and jets at velocities up to ∼ 104 km s−1 and more (Fabian 2012).”
The realm of the galaxy protoclusters (2016, background): “However, the fact that perturbed gas occurs both in radio-loud and radio-quiet sources indicates that feedback does not necessarily require radio jets, but can also arise from QSO or starburst winds (Polletta et al., 2011; Liu et al., 2013; Overzier et al., 2013; Hennawi et al., 2015).”
Gravitational torque-driven black hole growth and feedback in cosmological simulations (2016, background): “…and galaxy-scale winds (e.g. Feruglio et al. 2010; Rupke & Veilleux 2011; Sturm et al. 2011; Greene, Zakamska & Smith 2012; Maiolino et al. 2012; Liu et al. 2013; Cicone et al. 2014; Harrison et al. 2014) suggest that AGN feedback may have a significant impact on the evolution of massive black…”
AGN outflows and feedback twenty years on (2018, unknown): “Outflow radii For warm ionised gas, estimates of rout range from ∼ 10pc – based largely on Hubble Space Telescope imaging and spectro-astrometry measurements[40] up to &10 kpc based on ground based spectroscopy[44, 33].”
Quasar feedback and the origin of radio emission in radio-quiet quasars (2014, methodology): “…active galaxies, where the radiativelydriven wind would get quenched by the interaction with the interstellar medium, but could be typical of quasardriven winds (Moe et al. 2009; Zubovas & King 2012; Faucher-Giguère & Quataert 2012) even on galaxy-wide scales (Arav et al. 2013; Liu et al. 2013b).”
Kiloparsec-scale outflows are prevalent among luminous AGN: outflows and feedback in the context of the overall AGN population (2014, methodology): “A spatial profile with a constant [OIII ]/Hβ emission-line ratio followed by a sharp decline in this value indicates the break where theclouds become optically thin to ionizing radiation (see full description in Liu et al. 2013b).”
Ionised outflows in z $\sim$ 2.4 quasar host galaxies (2015, methodology): “Recent works estimate the mass of ionised outflows either using Hβ emission line (e.g Liu et al. 2013; Harrison et al. 2014) or using [Oiii]λ5007 line (e.g Cano-Díaz et al. 2012).”
AGN wind scaling relations and the co-evolution of black holes and galaxies (2017, background): “…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. 2015; Carniani et al. 2015;…”
X-shooter reveals powerful outflows in z ∼ 1.5 X-ray selected obscured quasi-stellar objects (2014, methodology): “However, in the absence of a measurement for all the sources, we decided to adopt a value of ne = 100 cm−3, as routinely adopted in similar studies of the ionized components based on Hβ fluxes (e.g. Liu et al. 2013; Harrison et al. 2014).”