Physics
Scientific paper
Sep 1994
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1994apj...432l..19v&link_type=abstract
Astrophysical Journal, Part 2 - Letters (ISSN 0004-637X), vol. 432, no. 1, p. L19-L22
Physics
9
Background Radiation, Baryons, Bubbles, Compton Effect, Microwaves, Quasars, Scattering, Stellar Mass Ejection, Stellar Winds, Kinetics, Photons, Stellar Luminosity, Stellar Physics
Scientific paper
At least 10% of quasars drive rapid outflows from the central regions of their host galaxies. The mass and energy flow rates in these winds are difficult to measure, but their kinetic luminosities probably exceed 1045 ergs/s. This kind of outflow easily sunders the interstellar medium of the host and blows a bubble in the intergalactic medium. After the quasar shuts off, the hot bubble continues to shock intergalactic gas until its leading edge merges with the Hubble flow. The interior hot gas Compton scatters microwave background photons, potentially providing a way to detect these bubbles. Assuming that quasar kinetic luminosities scale with their blue luminosities, we integrate over the quasar luminosity function to find the total distortion (y) of the microwave background produced by the entire population of quasar wind bubbles. This calculation of y distortion is remarkably insensitive to the properties of the intergalactic medium (IGM), quasar lifetimes, and cosmological parameters. Current Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) limits on y constrain the kinetic luminosities of quasars to be less than several times their bolometric radiative luminosities. Within this constraint, quasars can still expel enough kinetic luminosity to shock the entire IGM by z = 0, but cannot heat and ionize the IGM by z = 4 unless omegaIGM much less than 10-2.
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