Extreme Feedback in Action: Fast and Powerful Molecular Outflows in the Local Universe

Fast and powerful outflows may quench coeval star formation in galaxies, impact galaxy morphology and the circumgalactic medium, and regulate supermassive black hole (SMBH) accretion. The likely culprits, fast-accreting quasars, are common at the epoch of peak SMBH accretion but rare locally, making it hard to catch and study this phenomenon in action, even with JWST. Fortunately, there are notable exceptions: local ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs). Clear unambiguous signatures of outflows have been detected in these objects on all scales, ranging from X-ray/UV winds on sub-pc scales to galaxy-wide cold-molecular, cool-atomic, and warm-ionized outflows which extend to 10+ kpc. The energetics of these outflows scale with quasar power but current data are still missing the critically important coronal-ionized and warm-molecular gas phases to determine if the quasars in these systems actually affects the host evolution. The planned MIRI/MRS observations of a representative set of 13 local ULIRGs with the most robust outflow energetics to date will be analyzed with the JWST-optimized PSF decomposition software package q3dfit to (1) get an accurate and complete census of the outflow energetics, (2) constrain the dominant mechanisms that launch these outflows and their duty cycles, and (3) characterize the impact of the quasar outflow and intense radiation field on the physical state of the host ISM, coeval star formation activity, and circumgalactic medium. These exquisite data will serve as local templates to help interpret the coarser data from on-going JWST studies of distant obscured quasars. The proprietary period is shortened given the legacy value of the data.