Journal
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 436, Issue 4, Pages 3286-3305Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stt1812
Keywords
line: formation; galaxies: individual: HE 0238-1904; quasars: absorption lines
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Funding
- NASA [HST-AR-12653, HST-GO-12022, HST-AR-13233, ADAP12-0181]
- NSF [AST 0837880]
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Spectroscopic observations of quasar outflows at rest-frame 500-1000 A have immense diagnostic power. We present analyses of such data, where absorption troughs from O iv and O iv* allow us to obtain the distance of the outflows from the AGN and troughs from Ne viii and Mg x reveal the warm absorber phase of the outflow. Their inferred column densities, combined with those of O vi, N iv and H i, yield two important results. (1) The outflow shows two ionization phases, where the high-ionization phase carries the bulk of the material. This is similar to the situation seen in X-ray warm absorber studies. Furthermore, the low-ionization phase is inferred to have a volume filling factor of 10(-5)-10(-6). (2) We determine a distance of 3000 pc from the outflow to the central source using the O iv*/O iv column density ratio and the knowledge of the ionization parameter. Since this is a typical high-ionization outflow, we can determine robust values for the outflow's mass flux and kinetic luminosity of 40 M-circle dot yr(-1) and 10(45) erg s(-1), respectively, where the latter is roughly equal to 1 per cent of the bolometric luminosity. Such a large kinetic luminosity and mass flow rate measured in a typical high-ionization wind suggest that quasar outflows are a major contributor to AGN feedback mechanisms.
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