Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Volume 819, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.3847/0004-637X/819/2/166
Keywords
galaxies: active; galaxies: nuclei; infrared: galaxies; quasars: general
Categories
Funding
- ESA Member States
- NASA
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Energy
- Japanese Monbukagakusho
- Max Planck Society
- Higher Education Funding Council for England
- European Organization for Astronomical Research in the Southern hemisphere, Chile [084.A-0828, 086.A-0612, 087.A-0447, 088.A-0628]
- Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [AYA2012-31447, AYA2014-60476-P, CSD2009-00038]
- FEDER programme [AYA2015-64346-C2-1-P]
- ARCHES project (7th Framework of the European Union) [313146]
- Marie Curie Intra European Fellowship within the 7th European Community Framework Programme [PIEF-GA-2012-327934]
- Ramon y Cajal fellowship
- Science and Technology Facilities Council [ST/J000655/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- STFC [ST/J000655/1] Funding Source: UKRI
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We present the distributions of the geometrical covering factors of the dusty tori (f(2)) of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) using an X-ray selected complete sample of 227 AGNs drawn from the Bright Ultra-hard XMM-Newton Survey. The AGNs have z from 0.05 to 1.7, 2-10 keV luminosities between 10(42) and 10(46) erg s(-1), and Comptonthin X-ray absorption. Employing data from UKIDSS, 2MASS, and the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer in a previous work, we determined the rest-frame 1-20 mu m continuum emission from the torus, which we model here with the clumpy torus models of Nenkova et al. Optically classified type 1 and type 2 AGNs are intrinsically different, with type 2 AGNs having, on average, tori with higher f(2) than type 1 AGNs. Nevertheless, similar to 20% of type 1 AGNs have tori with large covering factors, while similar to 23%-28% of type 2 AGNs have tori with small covering factors. Low f(2) are preferred at high AGN luminosities, as postulated by simple receding torus models, although for type 2 AGNs the effect is certainly small. f(2) increases with the X-ray column density, which implies that dust extinction and X-ray absorption take place in material that share an overall geometry and most likely belong to the same structure, the putative torus. Based on our results, the viewing angle, AGN luminosity, and also f(2) determine the optical appearance of an AGN and control the shape of the rest-frame similar to 1-20 mu m nuclear continuum emission. Thus, the torus geometrical covering factor is a key ingredient of unification schemes.
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