Using HAWC+ to Find A Cold Quasar's Place in AGN Feedback
Event date
Speaker
Kevin Cooke
Affiliation
University of Kansas
Location
Online
Event Type
Teletalk

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The transition that massive galaxies undergo between their blue, star-formation dominated youth to their red quiescence observed today is only partially understood, with modern models requiring the blow out of cold gas by an active galactic nucleus (AGN). One phase of this transition that is difficult to observe is when the AGN is actively accreting, but its luminous output has yet to disperse the cold gas supply of the host galaxy. We have identified a population of these rare objects, classified as `cold quasars', that enable us to better understand the dust and star-formation properties of this critical phase. Found in the Stripe82X field, these first cold quasars are identified through X-ray, B-band, and FIR detections combined with broad emission lines in their optical spectra. These unobscured quasars are observed to host emission line and FIR fluxes consistent with starburst galaxies hosting hundreds of solar masses per year in star formation. In this talk, we present new SOFIA HAWC+ total intensity imaging constraining the FIR characteristics of a cold quasar at z = 0.405. We find that the accretion rate and star formation rate experienced by this object are consistent with the empirical black hole - stellar mass relation, indicating this could be in the early stages of an evolutionary path shared across the field.

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