Tracing AGN Feedback Power with Cool/Warm Outflow Densities: Predictions and Observational Implications

TL;DR

This study uses hydrodynamic simulations to link cool/warm outflow densities in AGN to the hot shocked wind, providing a new indirect method to estimate AGN feedback power and its impact on galaxy evolution.

Contribution

It introduces a novel simulation approach with high resolution to connect observable cool outflow properties to the elusive hot wind component in AGN feedback.

Findings

Cool outflow density scales with AGN luminosity and wind power.

Cloud properties are mainly shaped by radiative and turbulent mixing, insensitive to initial ISM.

Observational estimates of outflow rates may be significantly overestimated.

Abstract

Winds launched at the scale of the accretion disc or dusty torus in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are thought to drive energy-conserving outflows that shape galaxy evolution. The key signature of such outflows, the presence of a hot ($T \gtrsim 10^9 \, \rm K$), shocked wind component, is hard to detect directly. Observations of AGN outflows typically probe a separate outflow phase: cool/warm gas with $T \lesssim 10^5 \, \rm K$. Here, we show that the density of cool outflowing gas scales with AGN luminosity, serving as an indirect diagnostic of the elusive hot, shocked wind. We use hydrodynamic simulations with the moving-mesh code AREPO to target the interaction between a small-scale AGN wind of speed $\approx 10^4 \, \rm km \, s^{-1}$ and galactic discs containing an idealised, clumpy interstellar medium (ISM). Through a new refinement scheme targeting rapidly-cooling, fast-moving gas, our simulations reach a resolution of $\lesssim 0.1 \, \rm pc$ in the cool, outflowing phase. We extract an ensemble of cool clouds from the AGN-driven outflows produced in our simulations, finding that their densities increase systematically with AGN wind power and AGN luminosity. Moreover, the mass distribution and internal properties of these cloudlets appear to be insensitive to the initial properties of the ISM, and shaped mainly by the dynamics of radiative, turbulent mixing layers. The increase in cool outflow density with kinetic wind power and AGN luminosity has profound implications for observational estimates of outflow rates and their scaling with AGN luminosity. Depending on the available outflow and density tracers, observationally-derived outflow rates may be overestimated by orders of magnitude.