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M.A. and C.K. acknowledge support from NSF and NASA through grants AST-1715256, 80NSSC21K1915, and 80NSSC18K1718. R.D. and D.C. acknowledge the Eugene & Niesje Parker Fellowship Fund, NASA (grants NNX17AG30G, 80NSSC18K1218, and 80NSSC18K1726) and the NSF (grants AST-1714658, AST-1909778). G.C. acknowledges financial support from NASA grants 80NSSC20K0438 and 80NSSC19K095. The Fermi-LAT Collaboration acknowledges generous ongoing support from a number of agencies and institutes that have supported both the development and the operation of the LAT as well as scientific data analysis. These include the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Department of Energy in the United States, the Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/Institut National de Physique Nucleaire et de Physique des Particules in France, the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana and the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare in Italy, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in Japan, and the K. A. Wallenberg Foundation, the Swedish Research Council and the Swedish National Space Board in Sweden. Additional support for science analysis during the operations phase is gratefully acknowledged from the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica in Italy and the Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales in France. This work performed in part under DOE Contract DE-AC02-76SF00515. Work at NRL is supported by NASA.

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Gamma Rays from Fast Black-hole Winds

Publicated to:ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL. 921 (2): 144- - 2021-11-01 921(2), DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac1bb2

Authors: Ajello, M; Baldini, L; Ballet, J; Barbiellini, G; Bastieri, D; Bellazzini, R; Berretta, A; Bissaldi, E; Blandford, R D; Bloom, E D; Bonino, R; Bruel, P; Buson, S; Cameron, R A; Caprioli, D; Caputo, R; Cavazzuti, E; Chartas, G; Chen, S; Cheung, C C; Chiaro, G; Costantin, D; Cutini, S; D'Ammando, F; de la Torre Luque, P; de Palma, F; Desai, A; Diesing, R; Di Lalla, N; Dirirsa, F; Di Venere, L; Dominguez, A; Fegan, S J; Franckowiak, A; Fukazawa, Y; Funk, S; Fusco, P; Gargano, F; Gasparrini, D; Giglietto, N; Giordano, F; Giroletti, M; Green, D; Grenier, I A; Guiriec, S; Hartmann, D; Horan, D; Johannesson, G; Karwin, C; Kerr, M; Kovacevic, M; Kuss, M; Larsson, S; Latronico, L; Lemoine-Goumard, M; Li, J; Liodakis, I; Longo, F; Loparco, F; Lovellette, M N; Lubrano, P; Maldera, S; Manfreda, A; Marchesi, S; Marcotulli, L; Marti-Devesa, G; Mazziotta, M N; Mereu, I; Michelson, P F; Mizuno, T; Monzani, M E; Morselli, A; Moskalenko, I V; Negro, M; Omodei, N; Orienti, M; Orlando, E; Paliya, V; Paneque, D; Pei, Z; Persic, M; Pesce-Rollins, M; Porter, T A; Principe, G; Racusin, J L; Raino, S; Rando, R; Rani, B; Razzano, M; Reimer, A; Reimer, O; Saz Parkinson, P M; Serini, D; Sgro, C; Siskind, E J; Spandre, G; Spinelli, P; Suson, D J; Tak, D; Torres, D F; Troja, E; Wood, K; Zaharijas, G; Zrake, J

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Abstract

Massive black holes at the centers of galaxies can launch powerful wide-angle winds that, if sustained over time, can unbind the gas from the stellar bulges of galaxies. These winds may be responsible for the observed scaling relation between the masses of the central black holes and the velocity dispersion of stars in galactic bulges. Propagating through the galaxy, the wind should interact with the interstellar medium creating a strong shock, similar to those observed in supernovae explosions, which is able to accelerate charged particles to high energies. In this work we use data from the Fermi Large Area Telescope to search for the gamma-ray emission from galaxies with an ultrafast outflow (UFO): a fast (v similar to 0.1 c), highly ionized outflow, detected in absorption at hard X-rays in several nearby active galactic nuclei (AGN). Adopting a sensitive stacking analysis we are able to detect the average gamma-ray emission from these galaxies and exclude that it is due to processes other than UFOs. Moreover, our analysis shows that the gamma-ray luminosity scales with the AGN bolometric luminosity and that these outflows transfer similar to 0.04% of their mechanical power to gamma-rays. Interpreting the observed gamma-ray emission as produced by cosmic rays (CRs) accelerated at the shock front, we find that the gamma-ray emission may attest to the onset of the wind-host interaction and that these outflows can energize charged particles up to the transition region between galactic and extragalactic CRs.

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