Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userA hard X-ray view of Luminous and Ultra-luminous Infrared Galaxies in GOALS: I - AGN obscuration along the merger sequence
127
0
0.0
(
0
)
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
The merger of two or more galaxies can enhance the inflow of material from galactic scales into the close environments of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), obscuring and feeding the supermassive black hole (SMBH). Both recent simulations and observations of AGN in mergers have confirmed that mergers are related to strong nuclear obscuration. However, it is still unclear how AGN obscuration evolves in the last phases of the merger process. We study a sample of 60 Luminous and Ultra-luminous IR galaxies (U/LIRGs) from the GOALS sample observed by NuSTAR. We find that the fraction of AGN that are Compton-thick (CT; $N_{rm H}geq 10^{24}rm,cm^{-2}$) peaks at $74_{-19}^{+14}%$ at a late merger stage, prior to coalescence, when the nuclei have projected separations of $d_{rm sep}sim 0.4-6$ kpc. A similar peak is also observed in the median $N_{rm H}$ [$(1.6pm0.5)times10^{24}rm,cm^{-2}$]. The vast majority ($85^{+7}_{-9}%$) of the AGN in the final merger stages ($d_{rm sep}lesssim 10$ kpc) are heavily obscured ($N_{rm H}geq 10^{23}rm,cm^{-2}$), and the median $N_{rm H}$ of the accreting SMBHs in our sample is systematically higher than that of local hard X-ray selected AGN, regardless of the merger stage. This implies that these objects have very obscured nuclear environments, with the $N_{rm H}geq 10^{23}rm,cm^{-2}$ gas almost completely covering the AGN in late mergers. CT AGN tend to have systematically higher absorption-corrected X-ray luminosities than less obscured sources. This could either be due to an evolutionary effect, with more obscured sources accreting more rapidly because they have more gas available in their surroundings, or to a selection bias. The latter scenario would imply that we are still missing a large fraction of heavily obscured, lower luminosity ($L_{2-10}lesssim 10^{43}rm,erg,s^{-1}$) AGN in U/LIRGs.
rate research
Read More
We present an initial result from the 12CO (J=1-0) survey of 79 galaxies in 62 local luminous and ultra-luminous infrared galaxy (LIRG and ULIRG) systems obtained using the 45 m telescope at the Nobeyama Radio Observatory. This is the systematic 12CO (J=1-0) survey of the Great Observatories All-sky LIRGs Survey (GOALS) sample. The molecular gas mass of the sample ranges 2.2 x 10^8 - 7.0 x 10^9 Msun within the central several kiloparsecs subtending 15 beam. A method to estimate a size of a CO gas distribution is introduced, which is combined with the total CO flux in the literature. The method is applied to a part of our sample and we find that the median CO radius is 1-4 kpc. From the early stage to the late stage of mergers, we find that the CO size decreases while the median value of the molecular gas mass in the central several kpc region is constant. Our results statistically support a scenario where molecular gas inflows towards the central region from the outer disk, to replenish gas consumed by starburst, and that such a process is common in merging LIRGs.
We present a study of X-ray AGN overdensities in 16 Abell clusters, within the redshift range 0.073<z<0.279, in order to investigate the effect of the hot inter-cluster environment on the triggering of the AGN phenomenon. The X-ray AGN overdensities, with respect to the field expectations, were estimated for sources with L_x>= 10^{42} erg s^{-1} (at the redshift of the clusters) and within an area of 1 h^{-1}_{72} Mpc radius (excluding the core). To investigate the presence or not of a true enhancement of luminous X-ray AGN in the cluster area, we also derived the corresponding optical galaxy overdensities, using a suitable range of $r$-band magnitudes. We always find the latter to be significantly higher (and only in two cases roughly equal) with respect to the corresponding X-ray overdensities. Over the whole cluster sample, the mean X-ray point-source overdensity is a factor of ~4 less than that corresponding to bright optical galaxies, a difference which is significant at a >0.995 level, as indicated by an appropriate t-student test. We conclude that the triggering of luminous X-ray AGN in rich clusters is strongly suppressed. Furthermore, searching for optical SDSS counterparts of all the X-ray sources, associated with our clusters, we found that about half appear to be background QSOs, while others are background and foreground AGN or stars. The true overdensity of X-ray point sources, associated to the clusters, is therefore even smaller than what our statistical approach revealed.
Hot Dust-Obscured Galaxies (Hot DOGs) are hyperluminous ($L_{mathrm{8-1000,mu m}}>10^{13},mathrm{L_odot}$) infrared galaxies with extremely high (up to hundreds of K) dust temperatures. The sources powering both their extremely high luminosities and dust temperatures are thought to be deeply buried and rapidly accreting supermassive black holes (SMBHs). Hot DOGs could therefore represent a key evolutionary phase in which the SMBH growth peaks. X-ray observations can be used to study their obscuration levels and luminosities. In this work, we present the X-ray properties of the 20 most-luminous ($L_{mathrm{bol}}gtrsim10^{14}, L_odot$) known Hot DOGs at $z=2-4.6$. Five of them are covered by long-exposure ($10-70$ ks) Chandra and XMM-Newton observations, with three being X-ray detected, and we study their individual properties. One of these sources (W0116$-$0505) is a Compton-thick candidate, with column density $N_H=(1.0-1.5)times10^{24},mathrm{cm^{-2}}$ derived from X-ray spectral fitting. The remaining 15 Hot DOGs have been targeted by a Chandra snapshot (3.1 ks) survey. None of these 15 is individually detected; therefore we applied a stacking analysis to investigate their average emission. From hardness-ratio analysis, we constrained the average obscuring column density and intrinsic luminosity to be log$N_H,mathrm{[cm^{-2}]}>23.5$ and $L_Xgtrsim10^{44},mathrm{erg,cm^{-2},s^{-1}}$, which are consistent with results for individually detected sources. We also investigated the $L_X-L_{6mumathrm{m}}$ and $L_X-L_{bol}$ relations, finding hints that Hot DOGs are typically X-ray weaker than expected, although larger samples of luminous obscured QSOs are needed to derive solid conclusions.
We present the first results of a high-resolution Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) imaging survey of luminous and ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (U/LIRGs) in the Great Observatories All-Sky LIRG Survey (GOALS). From the full sample of 68 galaxies, we have selected 25 LIRGs that show resolved extended emission at sufficient sensitivity to image individual regions of star-formation activity beyond the nucleus.~With wideband radio continuum observations, which sample the frequency range from $3-33$ GHz, we have made extinction-free measurements of the luminosities and spectral indicies for a total of 48 individual star-forming regions identified as having de-projected galactocentric radii ($r_{G}$) that lie outside the 13.2$mu$m core of the galaxy.~The median $3-33$ GHz spectral index and 33 GHz thermal fraction measured for these extranuclear regions is $-0.51 pm 0.13$ and $65 pm 11%$ respectively.~These values are consistent with measurements made on matched spatial scales in normal star-forming galaxies, and suggests that these regions are more heavily-dominated by thermal free-free emission relative to the centers of local ULIRGs.~Further, we find that the median star-formation rate derived for these regions is $sim 1 M_{odot}$ yr$^{-1}$, and when we place them on the sub-galactic star-forming main sequence of galaxies (SFMS), we find they are offset from their host galaxies globally-averaged specific star-formation rates (sSFRs).~We conclude that while nuclear starburst activity drives LIRGs above the SFMS, extranuclear star-formation still proceeds in a more extreme fashion relative to what is seen in local spiral galaxies.
We investigate the nature of far-infrared (70 um) and hard X-ray (3-24 keV) selected galaxies in the COSMOS field detected with both Spitzer and Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR). By matching the Spitzer-COSMOS catalog against the NuSTAR-COSMOS catalog, we obtain a sample consisting of a hyperluminous infrared galaxy with log(L_IR/L_sun) > 13, 12 ultraluminous infrared galaxies with 12 < log(L_IR/L_sun) < 13, and 10 luminous infrared galaxies with 11 < log(L_IR/L_sun) < 12, i.e., 23 Hy/U/LIRGs in total. Using their X-ray hardness ratios, we find that 12 sources are obscured active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with absorption column densities of N_H > 10^22 cm^-2, including several Compton-thick (N_H ~ 10^24 cm^-2) AGN candidates. On the basis of the infrared (60 um) and intrinsic X-ray luminosities, we examine the relation between star-formation (SF) and AGN luminosities of the 23 Hy/U/LIRGs. We find that the correlation is similar to that of optically-selected AGNs reported by Netzer (2009), whereas local, far-infrared selected U/LIRGs show higher SF-to-AGN luminosity ratios than the average of our sample. This result suggests that our Hy/U/LIRGs detected both with Spitzer and NuSTAR are likely situated in a transition epoch between AGN-rising and cold-gas diminishing phases in SF-AGN evolutional sequences. The nature of a Compton-thick AGN candidate newly detected above 8 keV with NuSTAR (ID 245 in Civano et al. 2015) is briefly discussed.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
