As part of the Quantifying ULIRG AGN-driven Outflows (QUADROS) project to quantify
the impact of active galactic nuclei (AGN)-driven outflows in rapidly evolving galaxies in
the local Universe, we present observations of eight nearby ultraluminous infrared galaxies
(ULIRGs, 0.04 < z < 0.2) taken with the Intermediate-dispersion Spectrograph and Imaging
System on the William Herschel Telescope (WHT), and also summarize the results of the
project as a whole. Consistent with Rose et al. (2018), we find that the outflow regions are
compact (0.08 < R[O III] < 1.5 kpc), and the electron densities measured using the [S II], [O II]
trans-auroral emission-line ratios are relatively high (2.5 < log ne (cm−3) < 4.5, median
log ne (cm−3) ∼ 3.1). Many of the outflow regions are also significantly reddened (median
E(B − V) ∼ 0.5). Assuming that the deprojected outflow velocities are represented by the fifth
percentile velocities (v05) of the broad, blueshifted components of [O III] λ5007, we calculate
relatively modest mass outflow rates (0.1 < M < ˙ 20 M yr−1, median M˙ ∼ 2 M yr−1),
and find kinetic powers as a fraction of the AGN bolometric luminosity (F˙ = E/L ˙ bol) in
the range 0.02 < F <˙ 3 per cent (median F˙ ∼ 0.3 per cent). The latter estimates are in line
with the predictions of multi-stage outflow models, or single-stage models in which only a
modest fraction of the initial kinetic power of the inner disc winds is transferred to the larger
scale outflows. Considering the QUADROS sample as a whole, we find no clear evidence
for correlations between the properties of the outflows and the bolometric luminosities of the
AGN, albeit based on a sample that covers a relatively small range in Lbol. Overall, our results
suggest that there is a significant intrinsic scatter in outflow properties of ULIRGs for a given
AGN luminosity
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