Resolving Galactic-scale Obscuration of X-Ray AGNs at z ≳ 1 with COSMOS-Web

Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskriftLetterForskningfagfællebedømt

Dokumenter

  • John D. Silverman
  • Vincenzo Mainieri
  • Xuheng Ding
  • Daizhong Liu
  • Knud Jahnke
  • Michaela Hirschmann
  • Jeyhan Kartaltepe
  • Erini Lambrides
  • Masafusa Onoue
  • Benny Trakhtenbrot
  • Eleni Vardoulaki
  • Angela Bongiorno
  • Caitlin Casey
  • Francesca Civano
  • Andreas Faisst
  • Maximilien Franco
  • Steven Gillman
  • Ghassem Gozaliasl
  • Christopher C. Hayward
  • Anton M. Koekemoer
  • Vasily Kokorev
  • Stefano Marchesi
  • Robert Michael Rich
  • Martin Sparre
  • Hyewon Suh
  • Takumi Tanaka
  • Francesco Valentino

A large fraction of the accreting supermassive black hole population is shrouded by copious amounts of gas and dust, particularly in the distant (z ≳ 1) universe. While much of the obscuration is attributed to a parsec-scale torus, there is a known contribution from the larger-scale host galaxy. Using JWST/NIRCam imaging from the COSMOS-Web survey, we probe the galaxy-wide dust distribution in X-ray selected active galactic nuclei (AGNs) up to z ∼ 2. Here, we focus on a sample of three AGNs with their host galaxies exhibiting prominent dust lanes, potentially due to their edge-on alignment. These represent 27% (3 out of 11 with early NIRCam data) of the heavily obscured (N H > 1023 cm−2) AGN population. With limited signs of a central AGN in the optical and near-infrared, the NIRCam images are used to produce reddening maps E(B − V) of the host galaxies. We compare the mean central value of E(B − V) to the X-ray obscuring column density along the line of sight to the AGN (N H ∼ 1023−23.5 cm−2). We find that the extinction due to the host galaxy is present (0.6 ≲ E(B − V) ≲ 0.9; 1.9 ≲ A V ≲ 2.8) and significantly contributes to the X-ray obscuration at a level of N H ∼ 1022.5 cm−2 assuming an SMC gas-to-dust ratio that amounts to ≲30% of the total obscuring column density. These early results, including three additional cases from CEERS, demonstrate the ability to resolve such dust structures with JWST and separate the different circumnuclear and galaxy-scale obscuring structures.

OriginalsprogEngelsk
ArtikelnummerL41
TidsskriftAstrophysical Journal Letters
Vol/bind951
Udgave nummer2
Antal sider10
ISSN2041-8205
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 12 jul. 2023

Bibliografisk note

Funding Information:
We thank the anonymous referee for comments that improved the paper. We also are appreciative of useful discussions with Andy Goulding and Rosie Wise. J.S. is supported by JSPS KAKENHI (JP22H01262) and the World Premier International Research Center Initiative (WPI), MEXT, Japan. M.O. is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (12150410307). X.D. is supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant No. JP22K14071. The Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN) is funded by the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF) under grant No. 140. B.T. acknowledges support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement number 950533) and from the Israel Science Foundation (grant number 1849/19). M.F. acknowledges support from NSF grant AST-2009577 and NASA JWST GO Program 1727. E.V. acknowledges support from Carl Zeiss Stiftung with the project code KODAR.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society.

ID: 360689411