English

Powerful Outflows and Feedback from Active Galactic Nuclei

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2015-09-23 v1 High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena

Abstract

Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) represent the growth phases of the supermassive black holes in the center of almost every galaxy. Powerful, highly ionized winds, with velocities 0.10.2c\sim 0.1- 0.2c are a common feature in X--ray spectra of luminous AGN, offering a plausible physical origin for the well known connections between the hole and properties of its host. Observability constraints suggest that the winds must be episodic, and detectable only for a few percent of their lifetimes. The most powerful wind feedback, establishing the MσM -\sigma relation, is probably not directly observable at all. The MσM - \sigma relation signals a global change in the nature of AGN feedback. At black hole masses below MσM-\sigma feedback is confined to the immediate vicinity of the hole. At the MσM-\sigma mass it becomes much more energetic and widespread, and can drive away much of the bulge gas as a fast molecular outflow.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1503.05206,
  title  = {Powerful Outflows and Feedback from Active Galactic Nuclei},
  author = {Andrew King and Ken Pounds},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1503.05206},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

To appear in Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Vol 53. 44 pages, 10 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T08:55:39.079Z