Quasar feedback revealed by giant molecular outflows

By C. Feruglio, R. Maiolino, E. Piconcelli, N. Menci, H. Aussel, A. Lamastra, Fabrizio Fiore. 2010

454 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In the standard scenario for galaxy evolution young star-forming galaxies transform into red bulge-dominated spheroids, where star formation has been quenched. To explain this transformation, a strong negative feedback generated by accretion onto a central super-massive black hole is often invoked. The depletion of gas resulting from quasar-driven outflows should eventually stop star-formation across the host galaxy and lead the black hole to "suicide" by starvation. Direct observational evidence for a major quasar feedback onto the host galaxy is still missing, because outflows previously observed in quasars are generally associated with the ionized component of the gas, which only accounts for a minor fraction of the total gas content, and typically occurrs in the central regions. We used the IRAM PdB Interferometer to observe the CO(1-0) transition in Mrk 231, the closest quasar known. Thanks to the wide band we detected broad wings of the CO line, with velocities of up to 750 km s -1 and spatially resolved on the kpc scale. These broad CO wings trace a giant molecular outflow of about 700 M ⊙ /year, far larger than the ongoing star-formation rate (~200 M ⊙ /year) observed in the host galaxy. This wind will totally expel the cold gas reservoir in Mrk 231 in about 10 7 yrs, therefore halting the star-formation activity on the same timescale. The inferred kinetic energy in the molecular outflow is ~1.2 × 10 44 erg/s, corresponding to a few percent of the AGN bolometric luminosity, which is very close to the fraction expected by models ascribing quasar feedback to highly supersonic shocks generated by radiatively accelerated nuclear winds. Instead, the contribution by the SNe associated with the starburst fall short by several orders of magnitude to account for the kinetic energy observed in the outflow. The direct observational evidence for quasar feedback reported here provides solid support to the scenarios ascribing the observed properties of local massive galaxies to quasar-induced large-scale winds.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d20deab90f041c384b4225c3184f06b446065bc3

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

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. D. M. Alexander
4. R. Dav'e
5. M. Cappellari
6. T. Naab
7. R. Somerville
8. Thomas J. Cox

Citations in the corpus

• THE MULTIPHASE STRUCTURE AND POWER SOURCES OF GALACTIC WINDS IN MAJOR MERGERS (2013, background): “There is now evidence from multiple gas probes that the large-scale outflow in Mrk 231 is an example of such feedback (Rupke et al. 2005a; Fischer et al. 2010a; Feruglio et al. 2010; Sturm et al. 2011; Rupke & Veilleux 2011; Aalto et al. 2012; Cicone et al. 2012).”
• Ionised outflows in z $\sim$ 2.4 quasar host galaxies (2015, background): “Quasar-driven outflows extending to kpc-scales have been resolved both locally (e.g Feruglio et al. 2010; Rupke & Veilleux 2011; Cicone et al. 2012; Rupke & Veilleux 2013; Rodríguez Zaurín et al. 2013; Feruglio et al. 2013b,a; Cicone et al. 2014; Rodríguez Zaurín et al. 2014; Aalto et al. 2015;…”
• Massive molecular outflows and evidence for AGN feedback from CO observations (2013, methodology): “…emission lines in the seven sources is similar to the one adopted for studying the massive outflows detected in the CO(1–0) and CO(2–1) transitions in Mrk 231 (Feruglio et al. 2010; Cicone et al. 2012) and in the [CII] 158 μm line in the high redshift quasar SDSS J1148+5152 (Maiolino et al. 2012).”
• The biggest splash (2019, background): “These striking discoveries have been preceded by a decade of mounting evidence for molecular gas outflows (see e.g. Feruglio et al. 2010; Sturm et al. 2011; Cicone et al. 2014).”
• Evidence of strong quasar feedback in the early Universe (2012, background): “…recently in quasar hosts through the discovery of massive outflows, in particular through the detection of P-Cygni profiles of far-IR OH transitions (Fischer et al. 2010; Sturm et al. 2011), the detection high velocity wings of molecular emission lines (CO, HCN, Feruglio et al. 2010; Alatalo etal.”
• The multi-phase winds of Markarian 231: from the hot, nuclear, ultra-fast wind to the galaxy-scale, molecular outflow (2015, methodology): “The first prototypical massive molecular outflow, extended on kpc scale, was discovered in this galaxy (Feruglio et al. 2010, Fischer et al. 2010, Aalto et al. 2012, 2014, Gonzalez-Alfonso et al. 2014).”
• Very extended cold gas, star formation and outflows in the halo of a bright QSO at z>6 (2014, background): “…against observations of AGN-driven outflows and, in particular, of massive kpcscale outflows of cold and dense molecular gas in nearby galaxies (Feruglio et al. 2010, 2013a,b; Alatalo et al. 2011; Sturm et al. 2011; Aalto et al. 2012; Veilleux et al. 2013; Spoon et al. 2013; Combes et al.…”
• The physics of galactic winds driven by active galactic nuclei (2012, methodology): “In ULIRGs with observed outflows, this is much lower than the mean densities n̄H ∼ 103 − 104 cm−3 of the dense molecular disks on scales ∼ 500 pc (e.g., Downes & Solomon 1998).5 Thus, the observed galaxy-scale outflows in these systems must have propagated along paths of least resistance.”
• EVIDENCE FOR WIDE-SPREAD ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS-DRIVEN OUTFLOWS IN THE MOST MASSIVE z ∼ 1–2 STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2014, background): “…Westmoquette et al. 2012; Rupke & Veilleux 2013; Harrison et al. 2014), and in powerful neutral and ionized gas outflows from buried AGNs in late-stage, gas-rich mergers (Fischer et al. 2010; Feruglio et al. 2010; Sturm et al. 2011; Rupke & Veilleux 2013; Veilleux et al. 2013; Arribas et al. 2014).”
• Observational evidence of quasar feedback quenching star formation at high redshift (2011, background): “Massive, large-scale outflows have been detected in the hosts of local quasars (e.g. Feruglio et al., 2010; Fischer et al.,2010; Sturm et al., 2011; Rupke & Veilleux, 2011).”
• 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).”
• DISCOVERY OF AN ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS DRIVEN MOLECULAR OUTFLOW IN THE LOCAL EARLY-TYPE GALAXY NGC 1266 (2011, background): “Mrk 231, a nearby advanced major merger, shows a molecular outflow similar to that of NGC 1266 (Feruglio et al. 2010).”
• The LABOCA survey of the Extended Chandra Deep Field-South: clustering of submillimetre galaxies (2011, background): “Powerful winds are observed in luminous AGN (e.g. Feruglio et al. 2010; Fischer et al. 2010; Greene et al. 2011; Sturm et al. 2011) and have also been seen in some SMGs (e.g. Alexander et al. 2010; Harrison et al., in preparation), although for the SMGs it is unclear whether the winds are driven by…”
• Energetic galaxy-wide outflows in high-redshift ultraluminous infrared galaxies hosting AGN activity (2012, background): “Such observations of low-redshift galaxies have identified kpc-scale outflows in both ionised (e.g., Holt et al. 2008; Fu & Stockton 2009; Rupke & Veilleux 2011; Westmoquette et al. 2012) and molecular gas (e.g., Feruglio et al. 2010; Alatalo et al. 2011).”
• Molecular line emission in NGC 1068 imaged with ALMA: I. An AGN-driven outflow in the dense molecular gas (2014, background): “…being discovered in a growing number of nearby active galaxies including ultra luminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs), radio galaxies, and Seyferts (Feruglio et al. 2010; Sturm et al. 2011; Alatalo et al. 2011; Chung et al. 2011; Aalto et al. 2012; Dasyra & Combes 2012; Combes et al. 2013;…”
• Kiloparsec-scale outflows are prevalent among luminous AGN: outflows and feedback in the context of the overall AGN population (2014, background): “…kinematics of the ionised gas; however, we briefly note that outflowing gas has been observed in multiple gas phases in some AGN (e.g., Rupke et al. 2005; Martin 2005; Fischer et al. 2010; Feruglio et al. 2010; Alatalo et al. 2011; Veilleux et al. 2013; Cimatti et al. 2013; Rupke & Veilleux 2013).”
• CLEARING OUT A GALAXY (2012, background): “Recently, three groups (Feruglio et al. 2010; Rupke & Veilleux 2011; Sturm et al. 2011) have used molecular spectral line observations to reveal fast (vout ∼ 1000 km s −1) kpc–scale, massive (Ṁout ∼ 1000 M⊙ yr −1) outflows in the nearby quasar Mrk231.”