Using the Bright Ultrahard XMM-Newton survey to define an IR selection of luminous AGN based on WISE colours

By S. Mateos, A. Alonso-Herrero, F. Carrera, A. Blain, Mike Watson, X. Barcons, V. Braito, P. Severgnini, J. Donley, Daniel Stern. 2012

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We present a highly complete and reliable mid-infrared (MIR) colour selection of luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN) candidates using the 3.4, 4.6 and 12 µm bands of the Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) survey. The MIR colour wedge was defined using the wide-angle Bright Ultrahard XMM–Newton survey (BUXS), one of the largest complete flux-limited samples of bright (f4.5–10 keV > 6 × 10 −14 erg s −1 cm −2 ) ‘ultrahard’ (4.5–10 keV) X-ray-selected AGN to date. The BUXS includes 258 objects detected over a total sky area of 44.43 deg 2 of which 251 are spectroscopically identified and classified, with 145 being type 1 AGN and 106 type 2 AGN. Our technique is designed to select objects with red MIR power-law spectral energy distributions (SEDs) in the three shortest bands of WISE and properly accounts for the errors in the photometry and deviations of the MIR SEDs from a pure power-law. The completeness of the MIR selection is a strong function of luminosity. At L2–10 keV > 10 44 erg s −1 , where the AGN is expected to dominate the MIR emission, 97.1 +2.2 −4.8 and 76.5 +13.3 per cent of the BUXS type 1 and type 2 AGN, respectively, meet the selection. Our technique shows one of the highest reliability and efficiency of detection of the X-rayselected luminous AGN population with WISE amongst those in the literature. In the area covered by BUXS our selection identifies 2755 AGN candidates detected with signal-to-noise ratio ≥5 in the three shorter wavelength bands of WISE with 38.5 per cent having a detection at 2–10 keV X-ray energies. We also analysed the possibility of including the 22µm WISE band to select AGN candidates, but neither the completeness nor the reliability of the selection improves. This is likely due to both the significantly shallower depth at 22µm compared with the first three bands of WISE and star formation contributing to the 22µm emission at the WISE 22µm sensitivity.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4cff010f05b907d9315766c914145e6c1dc1fbbc

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Citations in the corpus

Properties of flat-spectrum radio-loud Narrow-Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies (2014, methodology): “Different characteristic regions are also plotted: the blazar “WISEGamma-ray Strip” (WGS) for BL Lacs (dashed line) and FSRQs (dotted line), as defined by Massaro et al. (2012) and the AGN wedge (dot-dashed line) as defined by Mateos et al. (2012, 2013) for X-ray selected AGNs.”
CHARACTERIZING THE MID-INFRARED EXTRAGALACTIC SKY WITH WISE AND SDSS (2012, methodology): “…of W1−W2 method, briefly discussed in Jarrett et al. (2011), is tested and discussed in detail in Stern et al. (2012) and Assef et al. (2012) (see also Ashby et al. 2009; Assef et al. 2010; Eckart et al. 2010; Edelson & Malkan 2012; Massaro et al. 2012; Wu et al. 2012; Mateos et al. 2012).”
CHIME/FRB Discovery of Eight New Repeating Fast Radio Burst Sources (2019, methodology): “The latter scenario disfavors models that require a dense surrounding medium like what is observed for the Galactic center magnetar or in the vicinity of an AGN.”
IDENTIFICATION OF 1.4 MILLION ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI IN THE MID-INFRARED USING WISE DATA (2015, methodology): “We take all sources from the AllWISE catalog following equations (3) and (4) from Mateos et al. (2012) and we require that all of our sources have S/N ≥ 5 in the first three bands (w1,2,3snr>= 5), as recommended in Mateos et al. (2012), but as a further constraint we limit our results to those with…”
MID-INFRARED SELECTION OF ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI WITH THE WIDE-FIELD INFRARED SURVEY EXPLORER. II. PROPERTIES OF WISE-SELECTED ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI IN THE NDWFS BOÖTES FIELD (2012, background): “The four-band criterion of Mateos et al. (2012) also has high reliability, although it is below our R90 criterion in both reliability and completeness.”
Kiloparsec-scale outflows are prevalent among luminous AGN: outflows and feedback in the context of the overall AGN population (2014, methodology): “…one of the sources are classified as an infrared AGN based upon the WISE colours (W2−W1 and W3−W2) by falling inside the “AGN-wedge” defined in Mateos et al. (2012).2 We therefore simultaneously fit these data with the five star-forming galaxytem- 2 SDSS J1339+1425 does not have WISE…”
Galaxy Interactions Trigger Rapid Black Hole Growth: an unprecedented view from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey (2017, methodology): “However, IR color-color diagrams may fail to readily identify AGN accreting at low Eddington ratios (e.g., Donley et al. 2012; Mateos et al. 2012; Hainline et al. 2016).”
The Early Data Release of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (2023, methodology): “The QSO _ RED targets were selected from point sources in Legacy Survey's imaging using the Wide-ﬁ eld Infrared Survey Explorer ( WISE ) W1W2W3 color wedge of Mateos et al. ( 2012 ) .”
The WISE AGN Catalog (2017, methodology): “Secrest et al. (2015) WISE AGN Catalog Recently, Secrest et al. (2015) presented an all-sky AGN catalog selected purely on their WISE colors, based on the selection criteria of Mateos et al. (2012).”
Active galactic nuclei: what’s in a name? (2017, background): “The first ones were already developed for the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) mission (de Grijp et al. 1985, 1987; Leech et al. 1989), and their number has grown enormously since, with the advent, in the past decade, of the Spitzer Space Telescope (Werner et al. 2004; see, e.g. Lacy et al. 20”