The Powerful Black Hole Wind in the Luminous Quasar PDS 456
Abstract
Here broadband X-ray spectra of the luminous quasar PDS 456 are presented, as part of simultaneous campaign covering five NuSTAR and XMM-Newton observations during 2013-2014. The spectra show a persistent iron K-shell absorption profile in all of the observations, measured at 9 keV in the quasar rest frame, which demonstrates the presence of gas outflowing at about one third of the speed of light. Both the outflow emission and absorption components are spectrally resolved into a broad P-Cygni like profile, with the width of the profile corresponding to a FWHM velocity width of 35000 km/s. The flux of the iron K emission also responds directly to the hard X-ray continuum level, as measured in the NuSTAR data. The wind profile and response time makes it possible to measure the aperture and radial location of this wind, and thus to determine its total mass-loss rate and mechanical power. The observed wind stream starts at a radius of approximately 100 gravitational radii and spreads over a solid angle of at least 2 pi Steradian, and carries a kinetic power in excess of 1046 erg/s, enough to provide the feedback required by models of black hole and host galaxy co-evolution.
- Publication:
-
AAS/High Energy Astrophysics Division #14
- Pub Date:
- August 2014
- Bibcode:
- 2014HEAD...1420003R