The evolution of dusty torus covering factor in quasars

TL;DR

This study analyzes the evolution of the dusty torus covering factor in quasars across different redshifts, revealing anti-correlations with luminosity and an evolutionary trend with redshift.

Contribution

It provides the first large-scale comparison of dusty torus covering factors in quasars at different redshifts using multi-wavelength data.

Findings

Significant anti-correlation between covering factor and bolometric luminosity.

High-z quasars have larger covering factors than low-z quasars at similar luminosities.

Evidence suggests the covering factor evolves with redshift.

Abstract

We have assembled a large sample of 5996 quasars at redshift 2.0=< z <= 2.4 (high-z) or 0.7=< z <= 1.1 (low-z) from SDSS data release nine and seven quasar catalogs. The spectral energy distribution (SED) of quasars were constructed by collecting WISE, UKIDSS, and GALEX photometric data in addition to SDSS, from which the IR luminosity at 1-7 \mu m and bolometric luminosity at 1100 \AA - 1 \mu m were calculated. A red tail is clearly seen in the distributions of the spectral index in 1100 \AA - 1 \mu m both for high-z and low-z sources, which is likely due to red or reddened quasars. The covering factor of dusty torus is estimated as the ratio of the IR luminosity to the bolometric luminosity. We found significant anti-correlations between the covering factor and bolometric luminosity, in both high-z and low-z quasars, however they follow different tracks. At overlapped bolometric luminosity, the covering factor of high-z quasars are systematically larger than those of low-z quasars, implying an evolution of covering factor with redshift.