Far-IR dust properties of highly dust obscured AGNs from the AKARI and WISE all-sky surveys

TL;DR

This study utilizes combined AKARI and WISE all-sky survey data, along with other photometry, to characterize the dust properties of highly obscured AGNs through SED modeling, enabling insights into their dust mass, temperature, and luminosity.

Contribution

It introduces a method to determine AGN dust properties using only photometric data from multiple surveys, without requiring spectroscopic observations.

Findings

Estimated AGN dust mass and temperature using simple models.

Computed bolometric corrections from mid-IR colors.

Demonstrated the effectiveness of SED analysis for obscured AGNs.

Abstract

The combination of the AKARI and WISE infrared all-sky surveys provides an unique opportunity to identify and characterize the most highly dust obscured AGNs in the universe. Dust-obscured AGNs are not easily detectable and potentially underrepresented in extragalactic surveys due to their high optical extinction, but are readily found in the WISE catalog due to their extremely red mid-IR colors. Combining these surveys with photometry from Pan-STARRS and Herschel, we use SED modeling to characterize the extinction and dust properties of these AGNs. From mid-IR WISE colors, we are able to compute bolometric corrections to AGN luminosities. Using AKARI's far-IR wavelength photometry and broadband AGN/galaxy spectral templates, we estimate AGN dust mass and temperature using simple analytic models with 3-4 parameters. Even without spectroscopic data, we can determine a number of AGN dust properties only using SED analysis. These methods, combined with the abundance of archival photometric data publically available, will be valuable for large-scale studies of dusty, IR-luminous AGNs.