Obscured AGNs in Bulgeless Hosts discovered by WISE: The Case Study of SDSS J1224+5555

There is mounting evidence that supermassive black holes form and grow in bulgeless galaxies. However, a robust determination of the fraction of AGNs in bulgeless galaxies, an important constraint to models of supermassive black hole seed formation and merger-free models of AGN fueling, is unknown,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2016-06
Main Authors: Satyapal, S, Secrest, N J, Rothberg, B, O'Connor, J, Ellison, S L, Hickox, R C, Constantin, A, Gliozzi, M, Rosenberg, J L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Absorption
Active galactic nuclei
Astronomical models
Bolometers
Constraint modelling
Cosmic dust
Deposition
Galaxies
Infrared astronomy
Infrared signatures
Infrared spectra
Luminosity
Near infrared radiation
Space telescopes
Supermassive black holes
Wavelengths
Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer
X ray sources
XMM (spacecraft)
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Summary:There is mounting evidence that supermassive black holes form and grow in bulgeless galaxies. However, a robust determination of the fraction of AGNs in bulgeless galaxies, an important constraint to models of supermassive black hole seed formation and merger-free models of AGN fueling, is unknown, since optical studies have been shown to be incomplete for low mass AGNs. In a recent study using the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, we discovered hundreds of bulgeless galaxies that display mid-infrared signatures of extremely hot dust suggestive of powerful accreting massive black holes, despite having no signatures of black hole activity at optical wavelengths. Here we report X-ray follow-up observations of J122434.66+555522.3, a nearby (z=0.052) isolated bulgeless galaxy that contains an unresolved X-ray source detected at the 3 sigma level by XMM-Newton with an observed luminosity uncorrected for intrinsic absorption of L{2-10~keV}=1.1+/-0.4 10^40 ergs/s. Ground-based near-infrared spectroscopy with the Large Binocular Telescope together with multiwavelength observations from ultraviolet to millimeter wavelengths together suggest that J1224+5555 harbors a highly absorbed AGN with an intrinsic absorption of ~NH >10^24 cm^-2. The hard X-ray luminosity of the putative AGN corrected for absorption is L{2-10~keV}~3x10^42 ergs/s, which, depending on the bolometric correction factor, corresponds to a bolometric luminosity of the AGN of 6x10^43ergs/s - 3x10^44 erg/s, and a lower mass limit for the black hole of MBH~2x10^6 Msun, based on the Eddington limit.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1606.01268