The nature of obscuration in AGNs - II. Insights from clustering properties.

Based on large optical and mid-infrared (mid-IR) surveys, we investigate the relation between nuclear activity in local Seyfert 2 galaxies and galaxy interactions using a statistical neighbour-counting technique. At the same level of host galaxy star formation (SF), we find that active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with stronger {[O III]} emission lines do not show an excess of near neighbours, while AGNs with stronger mid-IR emission do have more near neighbours within a projected distance of 100 kpc. The excess neighbour count increases with decreasing projected radius. These results suggest a phase of torus formation during galaxy interactions.