Extended X-Ray Emission from a Quasar-driven Superbubble

Abstract

We present observations of extended, 20 kpc scale soft X-ray gas around a luminous obscured quasar hosted by an ultraluminous infrared galaxy caught in the midst of a major merger. The extended X-ray emission is well fit as a thermal gas with a temperature of kT ≈280 eV and a luminosity of L _X ≈ 10⁴² erg s^-1 and is spatially coincident with a known ionized gas outflow. Based on the X-ray luminosity, a factor of ~10 fainter than the [O III] emission, we conclude that the X-ray emission is either dominated by photoionization, or by shocked emission from cloud surfaces in a hot quasar-driven wind.