New Method for Exploring Super-Eddington AGNs by Near-infrared Observations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel infrared observational method to identify super-Eddington AGNs by analyzing their IR and near-IR emission properties, which differ significantly from sub-Eddington AGNs due to self-occultation effects.

Contribution

The study presents a new approach using IR and near-IR emission ratios to distinguish super-Eddington AGNs, highlighting the impact of the dusty torus geometry and self-occultation.

Findings

Super-Eddington AGNs have IR luminosity ratios less than 10^-2 of the bolometric luminosity.

NIR luminosity to bolometric luminosity ratio is at least an order of magnitude smaller in super-Eddington AGNs.

Low NIR-to-bolometric luminosity ratio can serve as an indicator for super-Eddington accretion.

Abstract

We propose a new method to explore the candidate super-Eddington active galactic nuclei (AGNs). We examine the properties of infrared (IR) emission from the inner edge of the dusty torus in AGNs, which are powered by super- or sub-Eddington accretion flows around black holes, by considering the dependence of the polar angle on the radiation flux of accretion flows (Watarai et al. 2005). We find that for super-Eddington AGNs, of which the mass accretion rate is more than 10^2 times larger than the Eddington rate, the ratio of the AGN IR luminosity and the disc bolometric luminosity is less than 10^-2, unless the half opening angle of the torus (theta_torus) is small (theta_torus <65 degree). This is due to the self-occultation effect, whereby the self-absorption at the outer region of the super-Eddington flow dilutes the illumination of the torus. Such a small luminosity ratio is not observed in sub-Eddington AGNs, whose mass accretion rate is comparable to or no more than 10 times larger than the Eddington mass accretion rate, except for extremely thin tori (theta_torus >85 degree). We also consider the properties of the near-IR (NIR) emission radiated from hot dust >1000 K. We find that super-Eddington AGNs have a ratio of the NIR luminosity to the bolometric luminosity, L_NIR,AGN/L_bol,disc, at least one order of magnitude smaller than for sub-Eddington AGNs for a wide range of half opening angle (theta_torus > 65 degree), for various types of dusty torus model. Thus, a relatively low L_NIR,AGN/L_bol,disc is a property that allows identification of candidate super-Eddington AGNs. Lastly, we discuss the possibility that NIR-faint quasars at redshift z=6 discovered by a recent deep SDSS survey may be young quasars whose black holes grow via super-Eddington accretion.