ABSTRACT

I briefly discuss several specific issues regarding the possible inter-relationships between starbursts, quasars, and their extranuclear environments. First, I will argue that the case for fueling starbursts from the extranuclear environment is very strong. The luminosities of extreme starbursts are so large that they essentially require the complete conversion of a galaxy's interstellar medium into massive stars within a single dynamical time. Such starbursts should make good local laboratories for studying the processes involved in galaxy (spheroid) formation. Next, I will discuss the recent proposal by Terlevich and Boyle that the population of high-redshift radio-quiet quasars can be understood as the post-starburst-cores of young/proto elliptical galaxies (with no supermassive black holes required), and will argue that it has a serious energetics problem. Finally, I will describe the effects that the mechanical energy released by starbursts (and possibly quasars) has on their gaseous environments.

INTRODUCTION

The subject I have been asked to review — the complex inter-connections between starbursts, quasars, and their surrounding environment — is far too broad in scope to adequately summarize here in its entirety. I will therefore restrict my review to discussing some specific topics, all pertaining in some way to two general issues.

The first general issue concerns the connection between starbursts and quasars. How can we tell starbursts and quasars apart? Is there any causal or evolutionary connection between them? These issues have been recently reviewed by several different authors (Blandford 1992; Filippenko 1993; Heckman 1987, 1991). The second general issue concerns the two-way communication between starbursts or quasars and their environments.