Powerful ionized gas outflows in the interacting radio galaxy 4C +29.30 [GA]

http://arxiv.org/abs/2007.14977


We investigate the ionized gas excitation and kinematics in the inner $4.3 \times 6.2$ kpc$^{2}$ of the merger radio galaxy 4C +29.30. Using optical integral field spectroscopy with the Gemini North Telescope, we present flux distributions, line-ratio maps, peak velocities and velocity dispersion maps as well as channel maps with a spatial resolution of $\approx 955$ pc. We observe high blueshifts of up to $\sim -650$ km s$^{-1}$, in a region $\sim 1”$ south of the nucleus (the southern knot, SK), which also presents high velocity dispersions ($\sim 250$ km s$^{-1}$), which we attribute to an outflow. A possible redshifted counterpart is observed north from the nucleus (the northern knot, NK). We propose that these regions correspond to a bipolar outflow possibly due to the interaction of the radio jet with the ambient gas. We estimate a total ionized gas mass outflow rate of $\dot{M}{out} = 25.4 \substack{+11.5 \ -7.5}$ M$\odot$ yr$^{-1}$ with a kinetic power of $\dot{E} = 8.1 \substack{+10.7 \ -4.0} \times 10^{42}$ erg s$^{-1}$, which represents $5.8 \substack{+7.6 \ -2.9} \%$ of the AGN bolometric luminosity. These values are higher than usually observed in nearby active galaxies with the same bolometric luminosities and could imply a significant impact of the outflows in the evolution of the host galaxy. The excitation is higher in the NK (that correlates with extended X-ray emission, indicating the presence of hotter gas) than in the SK, supporting a scenario in which an obscuring dust lane is blocking part of the AGN radiation to reach the southern region of the galaxy.

Read this paper on arXiv…

G. Couto, T. Storchi-Bergmann, A. Siemiginowska, et. al.
Thu, 30 Jul 20
-585/71

Comments: 17 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables, accepted by MNRAS. Comments are welcome