Discovery of a Remarkably Powerful Broad Absorption Line Quasar Outflow in SDSS J135246.37+423923.5

Abstract

Broad absorption line (BAL) features in quasar spectra reveal an unambiguous signature of energetic outflows from central supermassive black holes, and thus BAL quasars are prime targets for investigating the potential process of luminous quasar feedback on galaxies. We analyzed the rest-UV spectrum of an "overlapping trough" iron low-ionization broad absorption line quasar (FeLoBAL) SDSS J135246.37+423923.5 using the novel spectral synthesis code SimBAL (Leighly et al. 2018) and discovered an extraordinarily fast and energetic BAL outflow. Our analysis revealed outflow velocities reaching $\sim -38000\mathrm{km}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$ with a velocity width of $\sim 10000\mathrm{km}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$ which is the largest FeLoBAL outflow velocity measured to date. The column density of the outflow gas is log$N_H\sim 23.2[\mathrm{c}{\mathrm{m}}^{-1}]$ with the log kinetic luminosity $\log L_{KE}\sim 48.1$ [erg ${\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$] which exceeds the bolometric luminosity of the quasar and is energetic enough to effectively drive quasar feedback. The energy estimate for the outflow is far greater than the estimates from any BAL object previously reported. The object also shows "anomalous reddening" and a significant scattered component that we were able to model with SimBAL. We found the first definitive case for radiation filtering in an additional zero-velocity absorption component that required an absorbed continuum to produce the particular absorption lines observed (MgII, AlIII and AlII) without also producing the high ionization lines such as CIV.

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