An Assessment of the Energy Budgets of Low-Ionization Nuclear Emission Regions

Using the SEDs of the weak AGNs 35 LINERs presented in a companion paper, we assess whether photoionization by the weak AGN can power the emission-line luminosities measured through the large (few-arcsecond) apertures used in ground-based spectroscopic surveys. Spectra taken through such apertures are used to define LINERs as a class and constrain non-stellar photoionization models for LINERs. Therefore, our energy budget test is a self-consistency check of the idea that the observed emission lines are powered by an AGN. We determine the ionizing luminosities and photon rates by integrating the observed SEDs and by scaling a template SED. Even if all ionizing photons are absorbed by the line-emitting gas, more than half of our LINERs suffer from a deficit of ionizing photons. In 1/3 of LINERs the deficit is severe. If only 10% of the ionizing photons are absorbed by the gas, there is an ionizing photon deficit in 85% of LINERs. We disfavor the possibility that additional electromagnetic power, either obscured or emitted in the unobservable far-UV band, is available from the AGN. We consider other power sources such as mechanical heating by compact jets and photoionization by young or old stars. Photoionization by young stars may be important in a small fraction of cases. Mechanical heating provides enough power in most cases but it is not clear how this power is transferred to the emission-line gas. Photoionization by post-AGB stars is an important power source; it provides more ionizing photons that the AGN in more than half of the LINERs and enough ionizing photons to power the emission lines in 1/3 of the LINERs. It appears likely that the emission-line spectra of LINERs obtained from the ground include the sum of emission from different regions where different power sources dominate.

Spectral Energy Distributions of Weak Active Galactic Nuclei Associated With Low-Ionization Nuclear Emission Regions

We present a compilation of spectral energy distributions of 35 weak AGNs in LINERs using recent data from the published literature. We make use of previously published compilations of data, after complementing and extending them with more recent data. The main improvement in the recent data is afforded by high-spatial resolution observations with the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and high-spatial resolution radio observations utilizing a number of facilities. In addition, a considerable number of objects have been observed with the HST in the near-IR through near-UV bands since the earlier compilations were published. The data include upper limits resulting from either non-detections or observations at low spatial resolution that do not isolate the AGN. For the sake of completeness, we also compute and present a number of quantities from the data, such as alpha-ox, bolometric corrections, bolometric luminosities, Eddington ratios, and the average SED. We anticipate that these data will be useful for a number of applications. In a companion paper, we use a subset of these data ourselves to assess the energy budgets of LINERs.