Sep 8 – 13, 2019
Europe/Rome timezone
All inquiries about receipts for the payment of the conference fee and/or dinner should be addressed to: a.vriz@fondazionealmamater.it, d.bordignon@fondazionealmamater.it

The realm of hyperluminous quasars

Sep 12, 2019, 10:00 AM
15m

Speaker

Luca Zappacosta (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

Description

We are performing a systematic study of the the X-ray properties of the most luminous (L$_{bol}>10^{47}$ erg/s) quasars in the Universe spanning from optical- NIR- MIR-selected sources at z=2-3. These AGN exhibit widespread outflow signatures at all scales and they are the sources where we expect quasar feedback to manifests in full force. Hence they are in a transit phase, predicted in quasar merger-driven evolutionary scenarios, where powerful winds sweep out the obscuring-dust and leads to optically bright quasars. Our study aim at investigating the link between nuclear energetic output and the acceleration of winds. We find a mixture of unobscured and obscured sources with column density values reaching ~10^24 cm-2. Given the high Eddington ratio this is indicative that the nuclear regions in most of these systems are in the blow-out phase. Furthermore we discover that, despite the similarly high bolometric luminosity, the coronal X-ray radiative output varies by 1.5 dex and anti-correlate with the broad line region wind velocity. This evidence points to a link between the presence of winds and the nuclear radiative output.

Affiliation INAF - OAR
Topic Active Galactic Nuclei: accretion physics and evolution across cosmic time

Primary author

Luca Zappacosta (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

Co-author

Enrico Piconcelli (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

Presentation materials