Context. Feedback from accreting supermassive black holes is often identified as the main mechanism responsible for regulating star-formation in AGN host galaxies. However, the relationships between AGN activity, radiation, winds, and star-formation are complex and still far from being understood. Aims. We study scaling relations between AGN properties, host galaxy properties and AGN winds. We then evaluate the wind mean impact on the global star-formation history, taking into account the short AGN duty cycle with respect to that of star-formation. Methods. We first collect AGN wind observations for 94 AGN with detected massive winds at sub-pc to kpc spatial scales. We then fold AGN wind scaling relations with AGN luminosity functions, to evaluate the average AGN wind mass-loading factor as a function of cosmic time. Results. We find strong correlations between the AGN molecular and ionised wind mass outflow rates and the AGN bolometric luminosity. The power law scaling is steeper for ionised winds (slope 1.29±0.38) than for molecular winds (0.76±0.06), meaning that the two rates converge at high bolometric luminosities. The molecular gas depletion timescale and the molecular gas fraction of galaxies hosting powerful AGN driven winds are 3-10 times shorter and smaller than those of main-sequence galaxies with similar star-formation rate, stellar mass and redshift. These findings suggest that, at high AGN bolometric luminosity, the reduced molecular gas fraction may be due to the destruction of molecules by the wind, leading to a larger fraction of gas in the atomic ionised phase. The AGN wind mass-loading factor η =ṀOF /SFR is systematically higher than that of starburst driven winds. Conclusions. Our analysis shows that AGN winds are, on average, powerful enough to clean galaxies from their molecular gas only in massive systems at z < ∼ 2, i.e. a strong form of co-evolution between SMBHs and galaxies appears to break down for the least massive galaxies.
Aims. Outflows driven by active galactic nuclei (AGN) are invoked by galaxy evolutionary models to quench star formation and to explain the origin of the relations observed locally between super-massive black holes and their host galaxies. We here aim to detect extended ionised outflows in luminous quasars, where we expect the highest activity both in star formation and in black-hole accretion. Currently, there are only a few studies based on spatially resolved observations of outflows at high redshift, z > 2. Methods. We analysed a sample of six luminous (L > 10 47 erg/s) quasars at z ∼ 2.4, observed in H-band using the near-IR integral field spectrometer SINFONI at the VLT. We performed a kinematic analysis of the [O] emission line at λ = 5007 Å. Results. We detect fast, spatially extended outflows in five out of six targets.[O]λ5007 has a complex gas kinematic, with blueshifted velocities of a few hundreds of km s −1 and line widths up to 1500 km s −1 . Using the spectroastrometric method, we infer a size of the ionised outflows of up to ∼2 kpc. The properties of the ionised outflows, mass outflow rate, momentum rate, and kinetic power, are correlated with the AGN luminosity. The increase in outflow rate with increasing AGN luminosity is consistent with the idea that a luminous AGN pushes away the surrounding gas through fast outflows that are driven by radiation pressure, which depends on the emitted luminosity. Conclusions. We derive mass outflow rates of about 6−700 M yr −1 for our sample, which are lower than those observed in molecular outflows. The physical properties of ionised outflows show dependences on AGN luminosity that are similar to those of molecular outflows, but indicate that the mass of ionised gas is lower than that of molecular outflows. Alternatively, this discrepancy between ionised and molecular outflows could be explained with different acceleration mechanisms.
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