SUPER — AGN Feedback at Cosmic Noon: a Multi-phase and Multi-scale Challenge

Abstract

Theoretical models of galaxy evolution suggest that galaxy-wide outflows driven by active galactic nuclei (AGN), one of the so-called AGN-feedback mechanisms, are a fundamental process affecting the bulk of the baryons in the Universe. While the presence of such outflows out to kpc scales is now undisputed, their impact on the star formation, gas content and kinematics of the host galaxy is hotly debated. Here we report on the results from our Large Programme SUPER, which used the Spectrograph for INtegral Field Observations in the Near INfrared (SINFONI) on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) to carry out the first statistically sound high-spatial-resolution investigation of AGN outflows at z ~ 2, covering four orders of magnitude in AGN bolometric luminosity.