NUSTAR Unveils a Heavily Obscured Low-luminosity Active Galactic Nucleus in the Luminous Infrared Galaxy NGC 6286
Abstract
We report the detection of a heavily obscured active galactic nucleus (AGN) in the luminous infrared galaxy (LIRG) NGC 6286 identified in a 17.5 ks Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array observation. The source is in an early merging stage and was targeted as part of our ongoing NuSTAR campaign observing local luminous and ultra-luminous infrared galaxies in different merger stages. NGC 6286 is clearly detected above 10 keV and by including the quasi-simultaneous Swift/XRT and archival XMM-Newton and Chandra data, we find that the source is heavily obscured (NH ≃(0.95-1.32) × 1024 cm-2) with a column density consistent with being Compton-thick (CT, {log}({N}{{H}}/{{cm}}-2)≥slant 24). The AGN in NGC 6286 has a low absorption-corrected luminosity (L2-10 keV ∼ 3-20 × 1041 erg s-1) and contributes ≲1% to the energetics of the system. Because of its low luminosity, previous observations carried out in the soft X-ray band (<10 keV) and in the infrared did not notice the presence of a buried AGN. NGC 6286 has multiwavelength characteristics typical of objects with the same infrared luminosity and in the same merger stage, which might imply that there is a significant population of obscured low-luminosity AGNs in LIRGs that can only be detected by sensitive hard X-ray observations.
- Publication:
-
The Astrophysical Journal
- Pub Date:
- March 2016
- DOI:
- 10.3847/0004-637X/819/1/4
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1601.05800
- Bibcode:
- 2016ApJ...819....4R
- Keywords:
-
- galaxies: active;
- galaxies: interactions;
- infrared: galaxies;
- X-rays: galaxies;
- X-rays: general;
- Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies;
- Astrophysics - Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics;
- Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
- E-Print:
- Accepted for publication in ApJ, 14 pages, 7 figures