SUPER I. Toward an unbiased study of ionized outflows in z~2 active galactic nuclei: survey overview and sample characterization
Abstract
Theoretical models of galaxy formation suggest that the presence of an active galactic nucleus (AGN) is required to regulate the growth of its host galaxy through feedback mechanisms, produced by e.g. AGN-driven outflows. Although such outflows are common both at low and high redshift, a comprehensive picture is still missing. The peak epoch of galaxy assembly (1<z<3) has been poorly explored so far, and current observations in this redshift range are mostly limited to targets with high chances to be in an outflowing phase. This paper introduces SUPER (a SINFONI Survey for Unveiling the Physics and Effect of Radiative feedback), an ongoing ESO's VLT/SINFONI Large Programme. SUPER will perform the first systematic investigation of ionized outflows in a sizeable and blindly-selected sample of 39 X-ray AGN at z~2, which reaches high spatial resolutions (~2 kpc) thanks to the adaptive optics-assisted IFU observations. The outflow morphology and star formation in the host galaxy will be mapped through the broad component of [OIII] and the narrow component of Ha emission lines. The main aim of our survey is to infer the impact of outflows on the on-going star formation and to link the outflow properties to a number of AGN and host galaxy properties. We describe here the survey characteristics and goals, as well as the selection of the target sample. Moreover, we present a full characterization of its multi-wavelength properties: we measure, via spectral energy distribution fitting of UV-to-FIR photometry, stellar masses (4x10^9-2x10^11 Msun), star formation rates (25-680 Msun yr^-1) and AGN bolometric luminosities (2x10^44-8x10^47 erg s^-1), along with obscuring column densities (<2x10^24 cm^-2) and 2-10 keV luminosities (2x10^43-6x10^45 erg s^-1) derived through X-ray spectral analysis. Finally, we classify our AGN as jetted or non-jetted according to their radio and FIR emission.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1809.04858,
title = {SUPER I. Toward an unbiased study of ionized outflows in z~2 active galactic nuclei: survey overview and sample characterization},
author = {C. Circosta and V. Mainieri and P. Padovani and G. Lanzuisi and M. Salvato and C. M. Harrison and D. Kakkad and A. Puglisi and G. Vietri and G. Zamorani and C. Cicone and B. Husemann and C. Vignali and B. Balmaverde and M. Bischetti and M. Brusa and A. Bongiorno and S. Carniani and F. Civano and A. Comastri and G. Cresci and C. Feruglio and F. Fiore and S. Fotopoulou and A. Karim and A. Lamastra and B. Magnelli and F. Mannucci and A. Marconi and A. Merloni and H. Netzer and M. Perna and E. Piconcelli and G. Rodighiero and E. Schinnerer and M. Schramm and A. Schulze and J. Silverman and L. Zappacosta},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1809.04858},
year = {2018}
}
Comments
28 pages, 8 figures, 5 tables. Accepted for publication in A&A