Chandra and Spitzer Unveil Heavily Obscured Quasars in the Chandra/SWIRE Survey

By M. Polletta, B. Wilkes, B. Siana, C. Lonsdale, R. Kilgard, H. Smith, Dong-Woo Kim, F. Owen, A. Efstathiou, T. Jarrett and 11 more. 2006

190 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using the large multiwavelength data set in the Chandra/SWIRE Survey (0.6 deg2 in the Lockman Hole), we show evidence for the existence of highly obscured (Compton-thick) AGNs, estimate a lower limit to their surface density, and characterize their multiwavelength properties. Two independent selection methods based on the X-ray and infrared spectral properties are presented. The two selected samples contain (1) five X-ray sources with hard X-ray spectra and column densities ≳1024 cm-2 and (2) 120 infrared sources with red and AGN-dominated infrared SEDs. We estimate a surface density of at least 25 Compton-thick AGNs deg-2 detected in the infrared in the Chandra/SWIRE field, of which ~40% show distinct AGN signatures in their optical/near-infrared SEDs, the remaining being dominated by the host galaxy emission. Only ~33% of all Compton-thick AGNs are detected in the X-rays at our depth [F(0.3-8 keV) > 10-15 ergs cm-2 s-1]. We report the discovery of two sources in our sample of Compton-thick AGNs, SWIRE J104409.95+585224.8 (z = 2.54) and SWIRE J104406.30+583954.1 (z = 2.43), which are the most luminous Compton-thick AGNs at high z currently known. The properties of these two sources are discussed in detail with an analysis of their spectra, SEDs, luminosities, and black hole masses.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5f3a35cb4413cef4e2f9bffcd468b67d02449362

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. D. M. Alexander
2. P. Hopkins
3. L. Hernquist
4. W. N. Brandt
5. E. Daddi
6. R. Dav'e
7. A. Koekemoer
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In Instrumentation

1. D. M. Alexander
2. P. Hopkins
3. L. Hernquist
4. A. Renzini
5. A. Koekemoer
6. P. Capak
7. E. Daddi
8. R. Dav'e

Citations in the corpus

• Optical Spectroscopy and X-Ray Detections of a Sample of Quasars and Active Galactic Nuclei Selected in the Mid-Infrared from Two Spitzer Space Telescope Wide-Area Surveys (2006, background): “In the X-ray, Alonso-Herrero et al. (2006), Donley et al. (2005) and Polletta et al. (2006) find a significant population (40-60”
• EXTENDING THE NEARBY GALAXY HERITAGE WITH WISE: FIRST RESULTS FROM THE WISE ENHANCED RESOLUTION GALAXY ATLAS (2012, methodology): “For comparison, we show the expected light distribution of an old galaxy at t = 5 and 13 Gyrs, adapted from the GRASIL population synthesis models (Polletta et al. 2006 & 2007; Silva et al. 1998).”
• Cosmic X-ray surveys of distant active galaxies (2015, methodology): “Color-color selection from MIR photometric data (e.g., Lacy et al 2004; Stern et al 2005; Polletta et al 2006; Hickox et al 2007; Cardamone et al 2008; Donley et al 2008, 2012; Mateos et al 2013).”
• THE SPACE DENSITY OF COMPTON-THICK ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS AND THE X-RAY BACKGROUND (2009, background): “Five X-ray-selected CT AGN candidates were found in the Spitzer Wide-area InfraRed Extragalactic survey (SWIRE; Polletta et al. 2006); these are transmissiondominated CT AGN and all of them have intrinsic X-ray luminosities greater than 1045 erg s−1 (magenta open circle, Fig.”
• S-COSMOS: The Spitzer Legacy Survey of the Hubble Space Telescope ACS 2 deg2 COSMOS Field I: Survey Strategy and First Analysis (2007, background): “Mid-infrared selection has been shown to be ∼ 60% more efficient in selecting highly obscured AGN (Polletta et al. 2006).”
• Discovery of extreme [O III] λ5007 Å outflows in high-redshift red quasars (2015, methodology): “Of all quasar templates in the SWIRE library (Polletta et al. 2007) the only one that produces a similarly steep rise in the mid-infrared is the ‘torus’ template derived from a high-redshift Compton-thick quasar (Polletta et al. 2006), shown in Fig.”
• Deep Spitzer 24 μm COSMOS Imaging. I. The Evolution of Luminous Dusty Galaxies—Confronting the Models (2009, background): “…have played a key role in driving the coeval growth of bulges and super-massive black holes but whose contribution is usually underestimated by surveys performed at other wavelengths (e.g., Houck et al. 2005; Polletta et al. 2006; Alonso-Herrero et al. 2006; Dey et al. 2008; Fiore et al. 2008).”
• A Cosmological Framework for the Co-Evolution of Quasars, Supermassive Black Holes, and Elliptical Galaxies. I. Galaxy Mergers and Quasar Activity (2007, methodology): “…as a function of quasar luminosity from Ueda et al. (2003) to attenuate a template AGN SED yields a very similar answer (see also Franceschini et al. 2005), as does using a mean X-ray to IR bolometric correction of obscured AGNs (Elvis et al. 1994; Zakamska et al. 2004; Polletta et al. 2006).”
• Photometric redshifts in the SWIRE Survey (2008, background): “95+585224.8 (Polletta et al 2006), where the optical light is scattered light representing only a fraction of the total intrinsic optical output.”
• The synthesis of the cosmic X-ray background in the Chandra and XMM-Newton era (2006, methodology): “In particular the model predicted space density of Compton-thin and Compton-thick AGN will be compared with that obtained by infrared Spitzer surveys (i.e. Polletta et al. 2006).”
• Spitzer Power-Law Active Galactic Nucleus Candidates in the Chandra Deep Field-North (2007, methodology): “…obscured radiation is re-emitted (Ivison et al. 2004; Lacy et al. 2004; Hatziminaoglou et al. 2005; Stern et al. 2005; AlonsoHerrero et al. 2006; Polletta et al. 2006) or on combinations of MIR and multi-wavelength data (Johansson et al. 2004; Yan et al. 2004, 2005; Donley et al. 2005;…”
• Multiwavelength Study of Massive Galaxies at z ~ 2. II. Widespread Compton-thick Active Galactic Nuclei and the Concurrent Growth of Black Holes and Bulges (2007, background): “Similarly, Polletta et al. (2006) find a population of luminous Compton thick AGNs atz∼ 2 usingSpitzer, with a sky density of about 25 deg−2.”
• MID-INFRARED SELECTION OF ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI WITH THE WIDE-FIELD INFRARED SURVEY EXPLORER. I. CHARACTERIZING WISE-SELECTED ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI IN COSMOS (2012, background): “…from deep Chandra and Spitzer imaging of targeted surveys, significant advances have come in recent years at understanding the full census of AGN (e.g., Polletta et al. 2006; Hickox et al. 2007; Fiore et al. 2008; Gorjian et al. 2008; Comastri et al. 2011; Hickox et al. 2011; Mullaney et al. 2011).”
• A Significant Population of Very Luminous Dust-Obscured Galaxies at Redshift z ~ 2 (2008, background): “The range of SEDs in our sample is similar to that observed by Polletta et al. (2006).”
• CHASING HIGHLY OBSCURED QSOs IN THE COSMOS FIELD (2008, methodology): “Indeed, Polletta et al. (2006) used X-ray data to infer that some of these infrared bright QSOs are Compton-thick.”
• What drives the growth of black holes (2011, background): “Optical spectroscopy is also effective at identifying distant obscured AGNs (e.g., Steidel et al., 2002; Polletta et al., 2006; Alexander et al., 2008b; Juneau et al., 2011; Yan et al., 2011).”
• Unveiling Obscured Accretion in the Chandra Deep Field-South (2007, methodology): “Comparing the global observed Spectral Energy Distribution (SED) to AGN and galaxy templates proved to be more efficient in selecting AGN samples (Polletta et al. 2006, 2007).”