AGN Outflows in a Cosmological Context

Abstract

We combine cosmological simulations with an AGN luminosity function constrained by optical surveys in order to create a realistic AGN distribution in which to model AGN outflows. The outflows are modeled with assumptions of spherical symmetry and energy conservation. We study the importance of the kinetic luminosity of AGN outflows in determining the fractional volume of the IGM filled with outflows as a function of redshift. We find that kinetic luminosities of < 10% of the bolometric luminosities are required or the entire IGM would be filled with outflows at z=0. We also examine the effects of varying the AGN lifetime and the bias parameter, which describes how tightly correlated AGN are to high density regions. We find that longer lifetimes (tau_{AGN} ~ 1 Gyr), as well as small bias parameters increase the filling fraction.