The most luminous H2 emitters in the Universe? AGN Feedback, Warm Molecular Gas, and the Impact of the Radio Jets in High-z Radio Galaxies

Details The most luminous H2 emitters in the Universe? AGN Feedback, Warm Molecular Gas, and the Impact of the Radio Jets in High-z Radio Galaxies The most luminous H2 emitters in the Universe? AGN Feedback, Warm Molecular Gas, and the Impact of the Radio Jets in High-z Radio Galaxies

Mar 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008sptz.prop50402n&link_type=abstract

Spitzer Proposal ID #50402

Computer Science

Scientific paper

Strong negative feedback from supermassive black holes has been proposed to solve one of the outstanding problems in galaxy evolution models -- the 'hierarchy problem' where the most massive galaxies formed early and rapidly. We propose to test this hypothesis through observations of 5 powerful radio galaxies at z~2 with IRS in the LH and LL mode to study the properties of the warm molecular emission in these galaxies. If this hypothesis is correct, and these galaxies are driving strong outflows, outflows powerful and robust enough to solve this problem, we should observe broad, luminous H_2 emission lines in all sources, with widths of 1000 km/s or more, similar to what is observed in the rest-frame optical emission lines and luminositiies corresponding to relatively high temperatures and large H_2 mass, comparable or greater than the H_2 masses inferred from CO observations. This will be the first detection of H_2 at high redshift in sources, which have all the properties of being among the most luminous H_2 emitters in the universe. All of these targets are well-studied. They have near-infrared integral field spectroscopy revealing large velocity shears and dispersions, large enough so that the optical line emitting gas will escape even the most massive galaxy halos, large molecular masses from CO observations (few x 1e10 solar masses), and high resolution multi-frequency radio maps to infer both jet power and radio morphology to gauge the impact of relativistic electrons on the ambient ISM of the host galaxy. The missing component in all these studies is of course the impact the radio jet on the molecular gas, where most of the mass in these objects may in fact lie. As such, these observations are crucial to substantially increase our rudimentary understanding of the outflows driven by powerful AGN, and their yet largely unknown influence on the properties of the most massive galaxies.

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