Hot Dust Obscured Galaxies - The Most Powerful, Obscured Quasars in the Universe

Massive galaxies host super-massive black holes at their centers. During periods of intense gas accretion onto the latter, the luminosity of their accretion disks can exceed that of the stellar emission of the galaxy, leading to objects we call quasars. In this talk I will focus on a family of hyper-luminous, obscured quasars identified by the WISE mission referred to as Hot Dust Obscured Galaxies or Hot DOGs. With luminosities that can exceed 10^14 Lsun, these are some of the most luminous objects in the Universe, yet they are only easily identifiable at mid-IR wavelengths due to their almost Compton-thick obscuration. Their luminosities and high-Eddington ratios make them interesting candidates in which to observe the effects of this energy release onto their host galaxies, usually referred to as quasar-mode feedback. I will review what we know about this population, and other similar and possibly related ones, through studies across the electromagnetic spectrum.