Observations of feedback from radio-quiet quasars - I. Extents and morphologies of ionized gas nebulae

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

153 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Black hole feedback – the strong interaction between the energy output of supermassive black holes and their surrounding environments – is routinely invoked to explain the absence of overly luminous galaxies, the black hole versus bulge correlations and the similarity of black hole accretion and star formation histories. Yet direct probes of this process in action are scarce and limited to small samples of active nuclei. In this paper, we present Gemini Integral Field Unit observations of the distribution of ionized gas around luminous, obscured, radio-quiet quasars at z ∼ 0.5. We detect extended ionized gas nebulae via [O III] λ5007 A emission in every case, with a mean diameter of 28 kpc. These nebulae are nearly perfectly round, with Hβ surface brightness declining ∝R −3.5 ± 1.0 . The regular morphologies of nebulae around radio-quiet quasars are in striking contrast with lumpy or elongated [O III] nebulae seen around radio galaxies at low and high redshifts. We present the uniformly measured size–luminosity relationship of [O III] nebulae around Seyfert 2 galaxies and type 2 quasars spanning six orders of magnitude in luminosity and confirm the flat slope of the correlation (R[O III] ∝ L 0.25±0.02 [O III] ). We propose a model of clumpy nebulae in which clouds that produce line emission transition from being ionization-bounded at small distances from the quasar to being matter-bounded in the outer parts of the nebula. The model – which has a declining pressure profile – qualitatively explains line ratio profiles and surface brightness profiles seen in our sample. It is striking that we see such smooth and round large-scale gas nebulosities in this sample, which are inconsistent with illuminated merger debris and which we suggest may be the signature of accretion energy from the nucleus reaching gas at large scales.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d1cd58eef408c537803fefd7730c066fefe44a84

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Citations in the corpus

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).”
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.”
Observations of feedback from radio-quiet quasars – II. Kinematics of ionized gas nebulae (2013, methodology): “…campaign to map out the kinematics of the ionized gas around luminous obscured quasars (Zakamska et al. 2003; Reyes et al. 2008) using Magellan, Gemini and other facilities in search of signatures of quasar-driven winds (Greene et al. 2009, 2011; Greene, Zakamska & Smith 2012; Liu et al. 2013).”
UNLEASHING POSITIVE FEEDBACK: LINKING THE RATES OF STAR FORMATION, SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE ACCRETION, AND OUTFLOWS IN DISTANT GALAXIES (2013, methodology): “However, observations reveal quasi-spherical starformation-induced gas excitation around radio-quiet AGNs (Liu et al. 2013b).”
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;…”