Dr. Kirsten Hall (Center for Astrophysics, Harvard University)

Despite recent discoveries of quasar feedback in action through outflows and jets, the amount of energy that the active nucleus is capable of injecting into the extended medium of the host galaxy remains unknown. Theory suggests that quasar winds produce very hot gas bubbles that extend through the host galaxy and into the circumgalactic medium. Because this gas component is so hot and diffuse, the only way to measure its total energy is through the thermal Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (tSZ) effect. Almost a decade after our first tentative detection of this signal via stacking, we now have a definitive detection of the tSZ effect in an individual quasar system. With targeted multi-wavelength interferometric observations, I will report our recent results on the radio through sub-mm emission of radio quiet quasars and their companions/environments. We report the discovery of a dual quasar system at z=2.37 which is embedded in a bubble of hot gas as detected by a tSZ flux decrement. The total thermal energy of the hot gas surrounding the galaxy is greater than that expected from the entire atmosphere of the circumgalactic medium. We further detect a large-scale tSZ “bubble” in the CGM, and take advantage of the interferometric data to measure the total tSZ effect on 500 kpc scales. The future of individual, and resolved, SZ detections at high redshift will be a powerful probe into the physics of feedback and the circumgalactic medium.