Reliable Identification of Compton-thick Quasars at z~2: Spitzer Mid-IR spectroscopy of HDF-oMD49

TL;DR

This study identifies and confirms the presence of Compton-thick quasars at z~2 using Spitzer mid-IR spectroscopy, revealing their prevalence and challenging previous detection limitations in high-redshift AGN populations.

Contribution

The paper provides the first spectroscopic confirmation of Compton-thick AGNs in mid-IR bright galaxies at high redshift and estimates their space density, demonstrating their ubiquity in the early universe.

Findings

Confirmed six additional Compton-thick quasars at z~2-2.5.

Estimated the space density of Compton-thick quasars as (0.7-2.5)×10^-5 Mpc^-3.

Showed Compton-thick accretion is as common as unobscured accretion at high redshift.

Abstract

Many models that seek to explain the origin of the unresolved X-ray background predict that Compton-thick Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) are ubiquitious at high redshift. However, few distant Compton-thick AGNs have been reliably identified to date. Here we present Spitzer-IRS spectroscopy and 3.6-70um photometry of a z=2.2 optically identified AGN (HDF-oMD49) that is formally undetected in the 2Ms Chandra Deep Field-North (CDF-N) survey. The Spitzer-IRS spectrum and spectral energy distribution of this object is AGN dominated, and a comparison of the energetics at X-ray wavelengths to those derived from mid-infrared (mid-IR) and optical spectroscopy shows that the AGN is intrinsically luminous (L_X~3x10^44 erg/s) but heavily absorbed by Compton-thick material (N_H>>10^24 cm^{-2}); i.e., this object is a Compton-thick quasar. Adopting the same approach that we applied to HDF-oMD49, we found a further six objects at z~2-2.5 in the literature that are also X-ray weak/undetected but have evidence for AGN activity from optical and/or mid-IR spectroscopy, and show that all of these sources are also Compton-thick quasars with L_X>10^44 erg/s. On the basis of the definition of Daddi etal. (2007), these Compton-thick quasars would be classified as mid-IR excess galaxies, and our study provides the first spectroscopic confirmation of Compton-thick AGN activity in a subsample of these z~2 mid-IR bright galaxies. Using the four objects that lie in the CDF-N field, we estimate the space-density of Compton-thick quasars [Phi~(0.7-2.5)x10^-5 Mpc^-3 for L_X>10^44 erg/s objects at z~2-2.5] and show that Compton-thick accretion is as ubiquitious as unobscured accretion in the distant Universe.