Herschel far-infrared photometry of the Swift Burst Alert Telescope active galactic nuclei sample of the local universe - II. SPIRE observations
Abstract
We present far-infrared (FIR) and submillimetre photometry from the Herschel Space Observatory's Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE) for 313 nearby (z < 0.05) active galactic nuclei (AGN). We selected AGN from the 58 month Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) catalogue, the result of an all-sky survey in the 14-195 keV energy band, allowing for a reduction in AGN selection effects due to obscuration and host galaxy contamination. We find 46 per cent (143/313) of our sample is detected at all three wavebands and combined with our Photoconductor Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) observations represents the most complete FIR spectral energy distributions of local, moderate-luminosity AGN. We find no correlation among the 250, 350, and 500 μm luminosities with 14-195 keV luminosity, indicating the bulk of the FIR emission is not related to the AGN. However, Seyfert 1s do show a very weak correlation with X-ray luminosity compared to Seyfert 2s and we discuss possible explanations. We compare the SPIRE colours (F250/F350 and F350/F500) to a sample of normal star-forming galaxies, finding the two samples are statistically similar, especially after matching in stellar mass. But a colour-colour plot reveals a fraction of the Herschel-BAT AGN are displaced from the normal star-forming galaxies due to excess 500 μm emission (E500). Our analysis shows E500 is strongly correlated with the 14-195 keV luminosity and 3.4/4.6 μm flux ratio, evidence the excess is related to the AGN. We speculate these sources are experiencing millimetre excess emission originating in the corona of the accretion disc.
- Publication:
-
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Pub Date:
- March 2016
- DOI:
- 10.1093/mnras/stv2828
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1512.02733
- Bibcode:
- 2016MNRAS.456.3335S
- Keywords:
-
- methods: data analysis;
- galaxies: active;
- galaxies: photometry;
- galaxies: Seyfert;
- infrared: galaxies;
- Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies
- E-Print:
- 22 pages, 11 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS. We have created a Dataverse that contains all of the FITS images for the Herschel-BAT AGN as well as the photometry at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/herschel-bat-agn . Full versions of Tables 1 and 2 and Figure 1 are available at http://www.astro.umd.edu/~tshimizu/#research