Quasar quartet embedded in giant nebula reveals rare massive structure in distant universe

By J. Hennawi, J. Xavier Prochaska, S. Cantalupo, Fabrizio Arrigoni-Battaia Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, U. Cruz, E. Zurich. Science, 2015

179 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In a cluster of protogalaxies far, far away Astronomers constantly scour the sky for astronomical objects that can provide insight and constrain their models and simulations of galaxy evolution. Hennawi et al. surveyed the ancient sky at an epoch when the universe was half its age for nebulae: large clouds of ionized hydrogen. They stumbled across a system containing four active galactic nuclei, or quasars; objects that are thought to be the progenitors of galaxies. Finding a nebula with a rare quadruple quasar system embedded within it allows detailed spectroscopic and motional studies that may help to refine current models of galaxy and galaxy cluster formation. Science, this issue p. 779 The discovery of a rare four-quasar system may provide a test-bed for models of galaxy evolution. All galaxies once passed through a hyperluminous quasar phase powered by accretion onto a supermassive black hole. But because these episodes are brief, quasars are rare objects typically separated by cosmological distances. In a survey for Lyman-α emission at redshift z ≈ 2, we discovered a physical association of four quasars embedded in a giant nebula. Located within a substantial overdensity of galaxies, this system is probably the progenitor of a massive galaxy cluster. The chance probability of finding a quadruple quasar is estimated to be ∼10−7, implying a physical connection between Lyman-α nebulae and the locations of rare protoclusters. Our findings imply that the most massive structures in the distant universe have a tremendous supply (≃1011 solar masses) of cool dense (volume density ≃ 1 cm−3) gas, which is in conflict with current cosmological simulations.

Subfields: Communication, Language and Linguistics, Human-Computer Interaction

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/db790e9ab32a243b4a0be7dde9548d649f49f24b

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Citations in the corpus

The quest for dual and binary supermassive black holes: A multi-messenger view (2019, background): “Overdensities of multiple AGN separated by a few 10s of kpc have been detected this way within a few giant Lyα nebulae (Cantalupo et al., 2014; Hennawi et al., 2015; Cai et al., 2017; Arrigoni Battaia et al., 2018).”
The realm of the galaxy protoclusters (2016, background): “In this case, it is unclear whether the presence of gas found at large distances from QSOs (and some radio galaxies) is consistent with the outflow scenario (e.g., Prochaska & Hennawi, 2009; Cantalupo et al., 2014; Johnson et al., 2015; Hennawi et al., 2015).”
UBIQUITOUS GIANT Lyα NEBULAE AROUND THE BRIGHTEST QUASARS AT z ∼ 3.5 REVEALED WITH MUSE (2016, methodology): “…Kollmeier et al. 2010), fluorescent Lyα surveys were successfully carried out using custom-built narrowband (NB) filters on 8-meter class telescopes and ultra-deep integration on hyper-luminous and radio-quiet quasars at z∼ 2 (Cantalupo et al. 2012; Hennawi et al. 2015; Cantalupo et al. 2014).”
The impact of star formation feedback on the circumgalactic medium (2016, methodology): “10pc), as suggested by observations (e.g. Prochaska & Hennawi 2009; Hennawi et al. 2015; Stern et al. 2016).”
The WISE AGN Catalog (2017, background): “Multiple quasar systems are extremely rare, with only a few confirmed cases reported in the literature (Djorgovski et al. 2007; Farina et al. 2013; Hennawi et al. 2015).”
A characteristic scale for cold gas (2016, background): “While the origin of this cold gas is not known, the observations in Hennawi et al. (2015), Cantalupo et al. (2014), and Borisova et al. (2016) strongly suggest that the cloudlets are uniformly mixed with a virialized, pressure-supported CGM as is predicted in observations.”