Properties of dusty tori in active galactic nuclei - II. Type 2 AGN

TL;DR

This study investigates dusty tori in low-luminosity, low-redshift type 2 AGN using multi-component SED fitting, revealing insights into obscuration, star formation, and the unified model of AGN.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of dusty torus properties in type 2 AGN, supporting the receding torus model and highlighting the role of star formation in infrared emission.

Findings

Type 2 to type 1 ratio is about 2-2.5:1.

Obscuration decreases with increasing optical luminosity.

Far-infrared emission is mainly from star formation.

Abstract

(abridged) This paper is the second part of a work investigating the properties of dusty tori in AGN by means of multi-component SED fitting. It focuses on low luminosity, low redshift (z < 0.25) AGN selected among emission line galaxies as well as X-ray, radio and mid-infrared selected type 2 AGN samples from the literature. The available multi-band photometry covers the spectral range from the u-band up to 160 um. The observed SED of each object is fit to a set of multi-component models comprising a stellar component, a high optical depth torus and cold emission from a starburst (SB). The contribution of the various components (stars, torus, SB) is reflected in the position of the objects on the IRAC colour diagram. The comparison of type 1 (as derived from Hatziminaoglou et al. 2008) and type 2 AGN properties is broadly consistent with the Unified Scheme. The estimated ratio between type 2 and type 1 objects is about 2-2.5:1. The AGN accretion-to-infrared luminosity ratio is an indicator of the obscuration of the AGN since it scales down with the covering factor. We find evidence supporting the receding torus paradigm, with the estimated fraction of obscured AGN decreasing with increasing optical luminosity over four orders of magnitude. The average star formation rates are of ~ 10, 40 and 115 Mo/yr for the low-z, type 2 and quasar samples, respectively; but this might simply reflect observational biases, as our quasars are one to two orders of magnitude more luminous than the type 2 AGN. For the majority of objects with 70 and/or 160 um detections an SB component was needed in order to reproduce the data points, implying that the far-infrared emission in AGN arises mostly from star formation; moreover, the SB-to-AGN luminosity ratio shows a slight trend with increasing luminosity.