The Close AGN Reference Survey (CARS) Discovery of a global [C II] 158 mu m line excess in AGN HE 1353-1917

Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Open Access funding provided by Max Planck Society.
The [C II]lambda 158 mu m line is one of the strongest far-infrared (FIR) lines and an important coolant in the interstellar medium of galaxies that is accessible out to high redshifts. The excitation of [C II] is complex and can best be studied in detail at low redshifts. Here we report the discovery of the highest global [C II] excess with respect to the FIR luminosity in the nearby AGN host galaxy HE 1353-1917. This galaxy is exceptional among a sample of five targets because the AGN ionization cone and radio jet directly intercept the cold galactic disk. As a consequence, a massive multiphase gas outflow on kiloparsec scales is embedded in an extended narrow-line region. Because HE 1353-1917 is distinguished by these special properties from our four bright AGN, we propose that a global [C II] excess in AGN host galaxies could be a direct signature of a multiphase AGN-driven outflow with a high mass-loading factor.© I. Smirnova-Pinchukova et al. 2019
We thank the anonymous referee for helpful comments that improved the quality of the manuscript. Based on observations made with the NASA/DLR Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). SOFIA is jointly operated by the Universities Space Research Association, Inc. (USRA), under NASA contract NNA17BF53C, and the Deutsches SOFIA Institut (DSI) under DLR contract 50 OK 0901 to the University of Stuttgart. Based on observations collected at the European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere under ESO programme 094. B-0345(A) and 095. B-0015(A). M. G. is supported by the Lyman Spitzer Jr. Fellowship (Princeton University) and by NASA Chandra GO7-18121X and GO8-19104X. M. P. T. acknowledges support from the Spanish MINECO through grant AYA2015-63939-C2-1-P.