Luminous WISE-selected Obscured, Unobscured, and Red Quasars in Stripe 82

TL;DR

This study presents a complete spectroscopic sample of 147 infrared-selected AGN in Stripe 82, classifying them into different types, analyzing their X-ray properties, and examining their luminosity function evolution across a wide luminosity range.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive classification and analysis of infrared-selected AGN, including their X-ray properties and luminosity function evolution, with a focus on obscured and unobscured populations.

Findings

Spectroscopic classifications broadly agree with X-ray absorption levels.

Infrared-luminous sources deviate from X-ray luminosity relations.

Obscured AGN populations evolve differently with luminosity.

Abstract

We present a spectroscopically complete sample of 147 infrared-color-selected AGN down to a 22 $\mu$m flux limit of 20 mJy over the $\sim$270 deg$^2$ of the SDSS Stripe 82 region. Most of these sources are in the QSO luminosity regime ($L_{\rm bol} \gtrsim 10^{12} L_\odot$) and are found out to $z\simeq3$. We classify the AGN into three types, finding: 57 blue, unobscured Type-1 (broad-lined) sources; 69 obscured, Type-2 (narrow-lined) sources; and 21 moderately-reddened Type-1 sources (broad-lined and $E(B-V) > 0.25$). We study a subset of this sample in X-rays and analyze their obscuration to find that our spectroscopic classifications are in broad agreement with low, moderate, and large amounts of absorption for Type-1, red Type-1 and Type-2 AGN, respectively. We also investigate how their X-ray luminosities correlate with other known bolometric luminosity indicators such as [O III] line luminosity ($L_{\rm [OIII]}$) and infrared luminosity ($L_{6 \mu{\rm m}}$). While the X-ray correlation with $L_{\rm [OIII]}$ is consistent with previous findings, the most infrared-luminous sources appear to deviate from established relations such that they are either under-luminous in X-rays or over-luminous in the infrared. Finally, we examine the luminosity function (LF) evolution of our sample, and by AGN type, in combination with the complementary, infrared-selected, AGN sample of Lacy et al. (2013), spanning over two orders of magnitude in luminosity. We find that the two obscured populations evolve differently, with reddened Type-1 AGN dominating the obscured AGN fraction ($\sim$30%) for $L_{5 \mu{\rm m}} > 10^{45}$ erg s$^{-1}$, while the fraction of Type-2 AGN with $L_{5 \mu{\rm m}} < 10^{45}$ erg s$^{-1}$ rises sharply from 40% to 80% of the overall AGN population.