Quasar-driven outflows on galactic scales are a routinely invoked ingredient for galaxy formation models. We report the discovery of ionized gas nebulae as traced by [O III] λ5007 AA emission surrounding three luminous red quasars at z∼0.4 from Gemini Integral Field Unit (IFU) observations. All these nebulae feature unprecedented pairs of "superbubbles" extending ∼20 kpc in diameter, and the line-of-sight velocity difference between the red- and blue-shifted bubbles reaches up to ∼1200 km s−1. Their spectacular dual-bubble morphology (in analogy to the Galactic "Fermi bubbles") and their kinematics provide unambiguous evidence for galaxy-wide quasar-driven outflows, in parallel with the quasi-spherical outflows similar in size from luminous Type-1 and -2 quasars at concordant redshift. These bubble pairs manifest themselves as a signpost of the short-lived superbubble ``break-out'' phase, when the quasar wind drives the bubbles to escape the confinement from the dense environment and plunge into the galactic halo with a high-velocity expansion.
@article{arxiv.2307.06059,
title = {Discovery of spectacular quasar-driven superbubbles in red quasars},
author = {Lu Shen and Guilin Liu and Zhicheng He and Nadia L. Zakamska and Eilat Glikman and Jenny E. Greene and Weida Hu and Guobin Mou and Dominika Wylezalek and David S. N. Rupke},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.06059},
year = {2023}
}
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47 pages, 15 figures, Published in Science Advances on Jul 12 2023