Prevalence of radio jets associated with galactic outflows and feedback from quasars

Jarvis, ME; Harrison, CM; Thomson, AP; Circosta, C; Mainieri, V; Alexander, DM; Edge, AC; Lansbury, GB; Molyneux, SJ; Mullaney, JR

Abstract

We present 1–7 GHz high-resolution radio imaging (VLA and e-MERLIN) and spatially resolved ionized gas kinematics for 10 z < 0.2 type 2 ‘obscured’ quasars (log [LAGN/erg s−1] 45) with moderate radio luminosities (log[L1.4 GHz/W Hz−1] = 23.3–24.4). These targets were selected to have known ionized outflows based on broad [O III] emission-line components (full width at half-maximum≈800–1800 km s−1). Although ‘radio-quiet’ and not ‘radioAGN’ by many traditional criteria, we show that for nine of the targets, star formation likely accounts for 10 per cent of the radio emission. We find that ∼80–90 per cent of these nine targets exhibit extended radio structures on 1–25 kpc scales. The quasars’ radiomorphologies, spectral indices, and position on the radio size–luminosity relationship reveals that these sources are consistent with being low power compact radio galaxies. Therefore, we favour radio jets as dominating the radio emission in the majority of these quasars. The radio jets we observe are associated with morphologically and kinematically distinct features in the ionized gas, such as increased turbulence and outflowing bubbles, revealing jet–gas interaction on galactic scales. Importantly, such conclusions could not have been drawn from current low-resolution radio surveys such as FIRST. Our observations support a scenario where compact radio jets, with modest radio luminosities, are a crucial feedback mechanism for massive galaxies during a quasar phase.

Citation

Jarvis, M., Harrison, C., Thomson, A., Circosta, C., Mainieri, V., Alexander, D., …Mullaney, J. (2019). Prevalence of radio jets associated with galactic outflows and feedback from quasars. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 485(2), 2710-2730. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stz556

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 19, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Jan 25, 2019
• Publication Date: Jan 25, 2019
• Deposit Date: Jun 26, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 27, 2019
• Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Print ISSN: 0035-8711
• Electronic ISSN: 1365-2966
• Publisher: Royal Astronomical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 485
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 2710-2730
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stz556
• Related Public URLs: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/143433/