Bar triggered nuclear activity and the anisotropic radiation fields of Active Galactic Nuclei

Author(s):  
David J. Axon ◽  
A. Robinson
Author(s):  
L. Spinoglio ◽  
A. Alonso-Herrero ◽  
L. Armus ◽  
M. Baes ◽  
J. Bernard-Salas ◽  
...  

AbstractIR spectroscopy in the range 12–230 μm with the SPace IR telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics (SPICA) will reveal the physical processes governing the formation and evolution of galaxies and black holes through cosmic time, bridging the gap between the James Webb Space Telescope and the upcoming Extremely Large Telescopes at shorter wavelengths and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array at longer wavelengths. The SPICA, with its 2.5-m telescope actively cooled to below 8 K, will obtain the first spectroscopic determination, in the mid-IR rest-frame, of both the star-formation rate and black hole accretion rate histories of galaxies, reaching lookback times of 12 Gyr, for large statistically significant samples. Densities, temperatures, radiation fields, and gas-phase metallicities will be measured in dust-obscured galaxies and active galactic nuclei, sampling a large range in mass and luminosity, from faint local dwarf galaxies to luminous quasars in the distant Universe. Active galactic nuclei and starburst feedback and feeding mechanisms in distant galaxies will be uncovered through detailed measurements of molecular and atomic line profiles. The SPICA’s large-area deep spectrophotometric surveys will provide mid-IR spectra and continuum fluxes for unbiased samples of tens of thousands of galaxies, out to redshifts of z ~ 6.


1984 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 251-256
Author(s):  
E. Preuss

This review is an attempt to summarize VLBI continuum observations at cm- and dm-wavelengths of active galactic nuclei at distances ≲ 100 Mpc (Ho = 50 km s−1 Mpc−1). ‘Nearby galaxies’, thus defined, are close enough for achieving the highest possible spatial resolution. Galaxies at these distances, however, typically do not show extreme and rare forms of nuclear activity such as powerful radio sources, the cores of which are relatively easy to map with VLBI, and which are therefore the subject of most of the VLBI work done so far (see e.g. Preuss, 1983). Nearby active galaxies show rather more ‘ordinary’ forms of nuclear activity; they include a few of the weaker classical ‘radio galaxies’, but most of them are Seyfert galaxies and mildly active ‘normal galaxies’. Their total radio emission is typically weak (P(5 GHz) ≲ 1031 erg s−1 Hz−1) and so are their compact radio nuclei (if any). The highest available sensitivity is therefore required for their study and the current instrumental performance is just becoming sufficient to tackle the strongest of them in the hope of obtaining maps.


2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (09) ◽  
pp. 1401-1409
Author(s):  
ANDREW M. TAYLOR

Ongoing experimental efforts to detect cosmic sources of high energy neutrinos are guided by the expectation that astrophysical accelerators of cosmic ray protons also generate high energy neutrinos through their interactions with ambient matter and/or photons. However the predicted neutrino flux is reduced if cosmic ray sources accelerate not only protons but also a significant number of heavier nuclei, as is indicated by recent air shower data. I consider two plausible extragalactic class of sources, active galactic nuclei and gamma-ray bursts, and demand consistency with the observed cosmic ray composition and energy spectrum at Earth after allowing for propagation through intergalactic radiation fields. This allows me to calculate the degree of photo-disintegration and pion production expected to occur in these sources, and hence the neutrino fluxes from them.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (S359) ◽  
pp. 339-341
Author(s):  
Bruna L. C. Araujo ◽  
Thaisa Storchi-Bergmann ◽  
Sandro B. Rembold

AbstractIn this study, we aim to investigate the relation between nuclear activity and the environment for luminous (L[O III] >7.63 × 1041 erg s–1) Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) - that, at these luminosities are classified as quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) - using a sample of 436 type 2 QSOs. Recent studies suggest that there is an excess of interacting hosts in luminous AGN, indicating that interactions trigger the nuclear activity. In order to examine this, it is necessary to select a control sample of non-active galaxies, matched to the active ones by the properties of the host galaxies, such as distance and stellar mass. We present here the results of the search for such a control sample.


2013 ◽  
Vol 9 (S304) ◽  
pp. 112-118
Author(s):  
N. A. Levenson

AbstractCompton thick active galactic nuclei (AGN), which are obscured by column density NH > 1.5 × 104 cm−2, can be difficult to identify. They are certainly cosmically significant, both in producing the observed cosmic X-ray background, and in providing a location where black hole growth is hidden from view. Here I review some recent results from surveys that provide indications of Compton thick AGN, considering X-ray, radio, and infrared selection techniques. I also offer a caution against using mid-infrared silicate features to measure line-of-sight obscuration to active galactic nuclei. Instead, these features better indicate the geometric distribution of dust that the central engine heats. I conclude that the outstanding problem of Compton thick AGN is not the cases where the obscuration is directly associated with the environment of the active nucleus itself, even in the most obscured examples. Instead, we still risk missing the completely buried AGN, which are obscured by large amounts of gas and dust over large solid angles. The solution to finding Compton thick AGN may be to begin the search based on infrared emission and star formation, and then select for nuclear activity.


1998 ◽  
Vol 184 ◽  
pp. 463-464
Author(s):  
Luis C. Ho ◽  
Alexei V. Filippenko ◽  
Wallace L. W. Sargent

Between 1984 and 1990 we conducted a survey at Palomar Observatory (Filippenko and Sargent 1985) to quantify the luminosity function of nearby active galactic nuclei (AGNs). The Hale 5 m telescope was used to obtain high-quality, moderate-resolution optical spectra of a nearly statistically complete sample of about 500 bright (BT ≤ 12.5 mag), northern (δ > 0°) galaxies (see Ho et al. 1995 for details). The survey has now been completed, and the first scientific results are reported in a series of papers by Ho et al. (1997a, b, c).


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (S356) ◽  
pp. 171-171
Author(s):  
Amirnezam Amiri

AbstractMotivated by the apparently conflicting results reported in the literature on the effect of environment on nuclear activity, we have carried out a new analysis by comparing the fraction of galaxies hosting active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in the most overdense regions (rich galaxy clusters) and the most underdense ones (voids) in the local universe. Exploiting the classical BPT diagnostics, we have extracted volume limited samples of star forming and AGN galaxies. We find that, at variance with star-forming galaxies, AGN galaxies have similar distributions of specific star formation rates and of galactic ages (as indicated by the Dn4000 parameter) both in clusters and in voids. In both environments galaxies hosting AGNs are generally old, with low star formation activity. The AGN fraction increases faster with stellar mass in clusters than in voids, especially above 1010.2 M⊙. Our results indicate that, in the local universe, the nuclear activity correlates with stellar mass and galaxy morphology and is weakly, if at all, affected by the local galaxy density.


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