AGN are cooler than you think: the intrinsic far-IR emission from QSOs

TL;DR

This study derives an intrinsic spectral energy distribution (SED) for unobscured QSOs from optical to submillimeter wavelengths, revealing that AGN emission often dominates galaxy emission, impacting star-formation rate estimates.

Contribution

We present a new intrinsic AGN SED template derived by removing stellar contributions using PAH features, applicable to luminous AGN across various wavelengths.

Findings

AGN emission exceeds stellar emission from optical to submm in luminous QSOs.

The intrinsic AGN SED shape is consistent across different AGN powers beyond 20μm.

Implication that many galaxies' star-formation rates may be overestimated if AGN contribution is ignored.

Abstract

We present an intrinsic AGN SED extending from the optical to the submm, derived with a sample of unobscured, optically luminous (vLv(5100)>10^43.5 erg/s) QSOs at z<0.18 from the Palomar Green survey. The intrinsic AGN SED was computed by removing the contribution from stars using the 11.3um polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) feature in the QSOs' mid-IR spectra; the 1sigma uncertainty on the SED ranges between 12 and 45 per cent as a function of wavelength and is a combination of PAH flux measurement errors and the uncertainties related to the conversion between PAH luminosity and star-forming luminosity. Longwards of 20um the shape of the intrinsic AGN SED is independent of the AGN power indicating that our template should be applicable to all systems hosting luminous AGN (vLv(5100) or L_X(2-10keV) > 10^43.5 erg/s). We note that for our sample of luminous QSOs, the average AGN emission is at least as high as, and mostly higher than, the total stellar powered emission at all wavelengths from the optical to the submm. This implies that in many galaxies hosting powerful AGN, there is no `safe' broadband photometric observation (at lambda<1000um) which can be used in calculating star-formation rates without subtracting the AGN contribution. Roughly, the AGN contribution may be ignored only if the intrinsic AGN luminosity at 5100 Ang is at least a factor of 4 smaller than the total infrared luminosity (L_IR; 8-1000um) of the galaxy. Finally, we examine the implication of our work in statistical studies of star-formation in AGN host galaxies.