Discovery of a z = 0.65 post-starburst BAL quasar in the DES supernova fields

The DES Collaboration

doi:10.1093/mnras/stx708

Discovery of a z = 0.65 post-starburst BAL quasar in the DES supernova fields

The DES Collaboration

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Abstract

We present the discovery of a z = 0.65 low-ionization broad absorption line (LoBAL) quasar in a post-starburst galaxy in data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and spectroscopy from the Australian Dark Energy Survey (OzDES). LoBAL quasars are a minority of all BALs, and rarer still is that this object also exhibits broad Fe II (an FeLoBAL) and Balmer absorption. This is the first BAL quasar that has signatures of recently truncated star formation, which we estimate ended about 40 Myr ago. The characteristic signatures of an FeLoBAL require high column densities, which could be explained by the emergence of a young quasar from an early, dust-enshrouded phase, or by clouds compressed by a blast wave. The age of the starburst component is comparable to estimates of the lifetime of quasars, so if we assume the quasar activity is related to the truncation of the star formation, this object is better explained by the blast wave scenario.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	3682-3688
Number of pages	7
Journal	Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume	468
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx708
State	Published - Jul 1 2017

Funding

DM would like to gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments by Smita Mathur on a draft of this manuscript. Funding for the DES Projects has been provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Education of Spain, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, the Center for Cosmology and Astro-Particle Physics at the Ohio State University, the Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University, Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos, Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnologico and the Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Collaborating Institutions in the Dark Energy Survey. The Collaborating Institutions are Argonne National Laboratory, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the University of Cambridge, Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnologicas-Madrid, the University of Chicago, University College London, the DES-Brazil Consortium, the University of Edinburgh, the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zürich, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Institut de Ciències de l'Espai (IEEC/CSIC), the Institut de Física d'Altes Energies, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München and the associated Excellence Cluster Universe, the University of Michigan, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, the University of Nottingham, The Ohio State University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Portsmouth, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, the University of Sussex, Texas A&MUniversity and the OzDESMembership Consortium. The DES data management system is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant number AST-1138766. The DES participants from Spanish institutions are partially supported by El ministerio de Economia, Industria y Competitividad (MINECO) under grants AYA2012-39559, ESP2013-48274, FPA2013-47986, and Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa SEV-2012-0234. Research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) including ERC grant agreements 240672, 291329 and 306478. The data in this paper were based on observations obtained at the Australian Astronomical Observatory. Part of this research was conducted by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for All-sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO) through project number CE110001020.

Funders	Funder number
University of Michigan
Seventh Framework Programme	1138766, 240672, 306478, 291329
European Research Council
University of Nottingham
Australian Research Council

Keywords

Galaxies: active
Galaxies: starburst
Quasars: absorption lines

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10.1093/mnras/stx708

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@article{eb8515c46cc9413e8bba4e2ff857d549,

title = "Discovery of a z = 0.65 post-starburst BAL quasar in the DES supernova fields",

abstract = "We present the discovery of a z = 0.65 low-ionization broad absorption line (LoBAL) quasar in a post-starburst galaxy in data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and spectroscopy from the Australian Dark Energy Survey (OzDES). LoBAL quasars are a minority of all BALs, and rarer still is that this object also exhibits broad Fe II (an FeLoBAL) and Balmer absorption. This is the first BAL quasar that has signatures of recently truncated star formation, which we estimate ended about 40 Myr ago. The characteristic signatures of an FeLoBAL require high column densities, which could be explained by the emergence of a young quasar from an early, dust-enshrouded phase, or by clouds compressed by a blast wave. The age of the starburst component is comparable to estimates of the lifetime of quasars, so if we assume the quasar activity is related to the truncation of the star formation, this object is better explained by the blast wave scenario.",

keywords = "Galaxies: active, Galaxies: starburst, Quasars: absorption lines",

author = "{The DES Collaboration} and Dale Mudd and Paul Martini and Tie, {Suk Sien} and Chris Lidman and Richard McMahon and Manda Banerji and Tamara Davis and Bradley Peterson and Rob Sharp and Nicholas Seymour and Michael Childress and Geraint Lewis and Brad Tucker and Fang Yuan and Tim Abbot and Filipe Abdalla and Sahar Allam and Aur{\'e}lien Benoit-L{\'e}vy and Emmanuel Bertin and David Brooks and {Camero Rosell}, A. and Kind, {Matias Carrasco} and Jorge Carretero and {da Costa}, {Luiz N.} and Shantanu Desai and Thomas Diehl and Tim Eifler and David Finley and Brenna Flaugher and Karl Glazebrook and Daniel Gruen and Robert Gruendl and Gaston Gutierrez and Samuel Hinton and Klaus Honscheid and David James and Kyler Kuehn and Nikolav Kuropatkin and Edward Macaulay and Maia, {Marcio A.G.} and Ramon Miquel and Ricardo Ogando and Andres Plazas and Kevin Riel and Eusebio Sanchez and Basillio Santiago and Michael Schubnell and Ignacio Sevilla-Noarbe and Smith, {Robert C.} and Eric Suchyta",

note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2017 The Authors.",

year = "2017",

month = jul,

day = "1",

doi = "10.1093/mnras/stx708",

language = "English",

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pages = "3682--3688",

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T1 - Discovery of a z = 0.65 post-starburst BAL quasar in the DES supernova fields

AU - The DES Collaboration

AU - Mudd, Dale

AU - Martini, Paul

AU - Tie, Suk Sien

AU - Lidman, Chris

AU - McMahon, Richard

AU - Banerji, Manda

AU - Davis, Tamara

AU - Peterson, Bradley

AU - Sharp, Rob

AU - Seymour, Nicholas

AU - Childress, Michael

AU - Lewis, Geraint

AU - Tucker, Brad

AU - Yuan, Fang

AU - Abbot, Tim

AU - Abdalla, Filipe

AU - Allam, Sahar

AU - Benoit-Lévy, Aurélien

AU - Bertin, Emmanuel

AU - Brooks, David

AU - Camero Rosell, A.

AU - Kind, Matias Carrasco

AU - Carretero, Jorge

AU - da Costa, Luiz N.

AU - Desai, Shantanu

AU - Diehl, Thomas

AU - Eifler, Tim

AU - Finley, David

AU - Flaugher, Brenna

AU - Glazebrook, Karl

AU - Gruen, Daniel

AU - Gruendl, Robert

AU - Gutierrez, Gaston

AU - Hinton, Samuel

AU - Honscheid, Klaus

AU - James, David

AU - Kuehn, Kyler

AU - Kuropatkin, Nikolav

AU - Macaulay, Edward

AU - Maia, Marcio A.G.

AU - Miquel, Ramon

AU - Ogando, Ricardo

AU - Plazas, Andres

AU - Riel, Kevin

AU - Sanchez, Eusebio

AU - Santiago, Basillio

AU - Schubnell, Michael

AU - Sevilla-Noarbe, Ignacio

AU - Smith, Robert C.

AU - Suchyta, Eric

PY - 2017/7/1

Y1 - 2017/7/1

N2 - We present the discovery of a z = 0.65 low-ionization broad absorption line (LoBAL) quasar in a post-starburst galaxy in data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and spectroscopy from the Australian Dark Energy Survey (OzDES). LoBAL quasars are a minority of all BALs, and rarer still is that this object also exhibits broad Fe II (an FeLoBAL) and Balmer absorption. This is the first BAL quasar that has signatures of recently truncated star formation, which we estimate ended about 40 Myr ago. The characteristic signatures of an FeLoBAL require high column densities, which could be explained by the emergence of a young quasar from an early, dust-enshrouded phase, or by clouds compressed by a blast wave. The age of the starburst component is comparable to estimates of the lifetime of quasars, so if we assume the quasar activity is related to the truncation of the star formation, this object is better explained by the blast wave scenario.

AB - We present the discovery of a z = 0.65 low-ionization broad absorption line (LoBAL) quasar in a post-starburst galaxy in data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and spectroscopy from the Australian Dark Energy Survey (OzDES). LoBAL quasars are a minority of all BALs, and rarer still is that this object also exhibits broad Fe II (an FeLoBAL) and Balmer absorption. This is the first BAL quasar that has signatures of recently truncated star formation, which we estimate ended about 40 Myr ago. The characteristic signatures of an FeLoBAL require high column densities, which could be explained by the emergence of a young quasar from an early, dust-enshrouded phase, or by clouds compressed by a blast wave. The age of the starburst component is comparable to estimates of the lifetime of quasars, so if we assume the quasar activity is related to the truncation of the star formation, this object is better explained by the blast wave scenario.

KW - Galaxies: active

KW - Galaxies: starburst

KW - Quasars: absorption lines

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DO - 10.1093/mnras/stx708

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VL - 468

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JO - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

JF - Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

IS - 3

ER -

Discovery of a z = 0.65 post-starburst BAL quasar in the DES supernova fields

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Keywords

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