Black hole feedback in the luminous quasar PDS 456

Creators: Nardini, E.; Reeves, J. N.; Gofford, J.; Harrison, F. A.; Risalti, G.; Braito, V.; Costa, M. T.; Matzeu, G. A.; Walton, D. J.; Behar, E.; Boggs, S. E.; Christensen, F. E.; Craig, W. W.; Hailey, C. J.; Matt, G.; Miller, J. M.; O'Brien, P. T.; Stern, D.; Turner, T. J.; Ward, M. J.

Abstract

The evolution of galaxies is connected to the growth of supermassive black holes in their centers. During the quasar phase, a huge luminosity is released as matter falls onto the black hole, and radiation-driven winds can transfer most of this energy back to the host galaxy. Over five different epochs, we detected the signatures of a nearly spherical stream of highly ionized gas in the broadband x-ray spectra of the luminous quasar PDS 456. This persistent wind is expelled at relativistic speeds from the inner accretion disk, and its wide aperture suggests an effective coupling with the ambient gas. The outflow's kinetic power larger than 1046 ergs per second is enough to provide the feedback required by models of black hole and host galaxy coevolution.

Additional Information

© 2015 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Received for publication 25 July 2014. Accepted for publication 20 January 2015. This research was supported under the U.K. Science and Technology Facilities Council grant ST/J001384/1 and is based on x-ray observations obtained with the XMM-Newton and NuSTAR satellites. XMM-Newton is a European Space Agency (ESA) science mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA member states and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The NuSTAR mission is a project led by the California Institute of Technology, managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and funded by NASA. We thank the NuSTAR Operations, Software, and Calibration teams for support with execution and analysis of these observations. We also acknowledge financial support from the Italian Space Agency under grant ASI-INAF I/037/12/0 (G.R. and G.M.); the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics under grant PRIN-INAF 2012 (G.R.); the I-CORE program of the Planning and Budgeting Committee, the Israel Science Foundation under grants 1937/12 and 1163/10, Israel's Ministry of Science and Technology (E.B.); and NASA under grants NNX11AJ57G and NNG08FD60C (T.J.T.). The data are stored in the science archives of the two x-ray observatories involved and will become publicly available on 25 March 2015 (XMM-Newton) and with the upcoming DR6 data release (NuSTAR).

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Supplemental Material - Nardini-SM.pdf

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