paper

Supermassive Black Hole Winds in X-rays -- SUBWAYS. I. Ultra-fast outflows in QSOs beyond the local Universe

arXiv:2212.02960 · doi:10.1051/0004-6361/202245036

Abstract

We present a new X-ray spectroscopic study of luminous () active galactic nuclei (AGNs) at intermediate-redshift (), as part of the SUpermassive Black hole Winds in the x-rAYS (SUBWAYS) sample, mostly composed of quasars (QSOs) and type\,1 AGN. Here, 17 targets were observed with \textit{XMM-Newton} between 2019--2020 and the remaining 5 are from previous observations. The aim of this large campaign ( duration) is to characterise the various manifestations of winds in the X-rays driven from supermassive black holes in AGN. In this paper we focus on the search and characterization of ultra-fast outflows (UFOs), which are typically detected through blueshifted absorption troughs in the Fe\,K band (). By following Monte Carlo procedures, we confirm the detection of absorption lines corresponding to highly ionised iron (e.g., Fe\,\textsc{xxv}\,H, Fe\,\textsc{xxvi}\,Ly) in 7/22 sources at the confidence level (for each individual line). The global combined probability of such absorption features in the sample is . The SUBWAYS campaign extends at higher luminosity and redshifts than previous local studies on Seyferts, obtained using \xmm and \suzaku observations. We find a UFO detection fraction of on the total sample that is in agreement with the previous findings. This work independently provides further support for the existence of highly-ionised matter propagating at mildly relativistic speed () in a considerable fraction of AGN over a broad range of luminosities, which is expected to play a key role in the self-regulated AGN feeding-feedback cycle, as also supported by hydrodynamical multiphase simulations.

arXiv comment30 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in A&A

References in corpus (157)

Cited by in corpus (24)