Ionized Gas Outflows in Low-excitation Radio Galaxies Are Radiation Driven

Low-excitation radio galaxies (LERGs) are weakly accreting active galactic nuclei (AGNs) believed to be fueled by radiatively inefficient accretion processes. Despite this, recent works have shown evidence for ionized and neutral hydrogen gas outflows in these galaxies. To investigate the potential drivers of such outflows, we select a sample of 802 LERGs using the Best & Heckman (2012) catalog of radio galaxies. By modeling the [O iii] λ5007 profile in Sloan Digital Sky Survey spectra of a sample of 802 LERGs, we determine that the ionized outflows are present in ∼1.5% of the population. Using 1.4 GHz imaging from the Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty Centimeters survey we analyze the radio morphology of LERGs with outflows and find these to be consistent with the parent LERG population. However, we note that unlike the majority of the LERG population, those LERGs showing outflows have Eddington-scaled accretion rates close to 1%. This is indicative that ionized outflows in LERGs are driven by the radiation pressure from the accretion disk of the AGN rather than the radio jets. We report specific star formation rates in the range of 10−12 < sSFR < 10−9 yr−1. Moreover, we observe higher mass outflow rates, 7–150 M ☉ yr−1, for these LERGs than luminous quasars for a given bolometric luminosity, which could possibly be due to the radio source in LERGs boosting the mass loading. This scenario could indicate that these outflows could potentially drive feedback in LERGs.