Testing Dark Matter Halo Models of Quasars With Thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect

TL;DR

This study uses simulated and observational data to analyze the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect around quasars, showing that observed signals can be explained by gravitational halo energy and proposing tSZ as a test for dark matter halo models.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the thermal energy from gravitational collapse explains the tSZ effect without extra feedback energy and proposes high-resolution tSZ measurements as a tool to test dark matter halo models for quasars.

Findings

Observed tSZ effect can be explained by halo gravitational energy.

Maximum additional feedback energy is about 25% of previous estimates.

High-resolution tSZ measurements can test dark matter halo models effectively.

Abstract

A statistical analysis of stacked Compton$-y$ maps of quasar hosts with a median redshift of $1.5$ using Millennium Simulation is performed to address two issues, one on the feedback energy from quasars and the other on testing dark matter halo models for quasar hosts. On the first, we find that, at the resolution of FWHM=$10$ arcmin obtained by Planck data, the observed thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich (tSZ) effect can be entirely accounted for and explained by the thermal energy of halos sourced by gravitational collapse of halos, without a need to invoke additional, large energy sources, such as quasar or stellar feedback. Allowing for uncertainties of dust temperature in the calibration of observed Comton$-y$ maps, the maximum additional feedback energy is $\sim 25\%$ of that previously suggested. Second, we show that, with FWHM=$1$ arcmin beam, tSZ measurements will provide a potentially powerful test of quasar-hosting dark matter halo models, limited only by possible observational systematic uncertainties, not by statistical ones, even in the presence of possible quasar feedback.