Extended Emission Line Regions around radio-quiet QSOs

It was noted soon after the discovery of the first quasars that some of them were surrounded by a nebulosity. Narrow-band imaging surveys and spectroscopic studies of quasars by Stockton et al. and Boroson et al. in the 1980s revealed that these nebulosities originated from extended emission-line regions (EELRs) where gaseous material is kept photoionized by the quasar. Since most of these quasars are radio-loud ones, it has been thought that the most luminous EELRs are exclusively associated with radio-loud quasars. In my talk I will present our integral field spectroscopy study of a large sample of radio-quiet quasars. I will show that also radio-quiet quasars can be surrounded by luminous EELRs with similar properties compared to their radio-loud counterparts and will present their global properties. Evidence for outflow signatures and/or jet-cloud interactions are detectable in several objects, which might give important clues on the nature of AGN feedback. I show spectacular data taken with the VIMOS/IFU instrument at the ESO-VLT and discuss the unexpected properties of the gas component around two radio-quiet quasars with elliptical hosts.

 

Date: 
31/03/2009 - 14:00
Speaker: 
Bernd Husemann
Filiation: 
AIP, Potsdam


Seminars