Evidence for a radiatively driven disc-wind in PDS 456?


Abstract in English

We present a newly discovered correlation between the wind outflow velocity and the X-ray luminosity in the luminous ($L_{rm bol}sim10^{47},rm erg,s^{-1}$) nearby ($z=0.184$) quasar PDS,456. All the contemporary XMM-Newton, NuSTAR and Suzaku observations from 2001--2014 were revisited and we find that the centroid energy of the blueshifted Fe,K absorption profile increases with luminosity. This translates into a correlation between the wind outflow velocity and the hard X-ray luminosity (between 7--30,keV) where we find that $v_{rm w}/c propto L_{7-30}^{gamma}$ where $gamma=0.22pm0.04$. We also show that this is consistent with a wind that is predominately radiatively driven, possibly resulting from the high Eddington ratio of PDS,456.

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