The Narrow Line Region properties of ESO138-G001 unveiled by SOAR/SIFS observations

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution integral field spectroscopy to analyze the narrow line region of ESO138-G001, revealing a compact coronal emission region, evidence of nuclear outflows, and insights into the ionization structure and black hole mass.

Contribution

First detailed spatial and spectral analysis of ESO138-G001's NLR using SOAR/SIFS, confirming the compactness of coronal emission and modeling the ionization and black hole mass.

Findings

Coronal line emission is very compact (~0.8"), centered on the AGN.

Evidence of nuclear outflow within 1" of the nucleus.

Black hole mass estimated at ~3.2 x 10^5 solar masses.

Abstract

We study in detail the inner 600 pc of the Seyfert 2 galaxy ESO138-G001 by means of the SOAR Integral Field Spectrograph (SIFS) attached to the SOAR telescope. This source is known for displaying a very rich coronal line spectrum and a blob of high-excitation emission ~3" SE of the active galactic nucleus (AGN). The nature of this emission has not been fully understood yet. The excellent spatial and spectral resolution of SIFS allows us to confirm that the bulk of the coronal line forest emission region is very compact, of ~0.8" in diameter, centred on the AGN and most likely powered by radiation from the AGN. In addition, evidence of a nuclear outflow, restricted to the inner 1" centred at the nucleus is found based on the detection of broad components in the most important emission lines. The gas in the inner few tens of parsecs filters out the AGN continuum so that the NLR is basically illuminated by a modified SED. This scenario is confirmed by means of photoionisation models that reproduce the most important lines detected in the SIFS field-of-view. From the modelling, we also found that the black hole mass M_BH of the AGN is about 10^5.5 solar mass, in agreement with previous X-ray observations. The spectrum of the SE blob is dominated by emission lines of low- to mid-ionisation, with no hints of coronal lines. Our results show that it represents gas in the ionisation cone that is photoionised by the filtered central AGN continuum.