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AGN with discordant optical and X-ray classification are not a physical family: Diverse origin in two AGN

Authors :
Ordovás-Pascual, I.
Mateos, S.
Carrera, F. J.
Wiersema, K.
Barcons, X.
Braito, V.
Caccianiga, A.
Del Moro, A.
Della Ceca, R.
Severgnini, P.
Publication Year :
2017

Abstract

Approximately 3-17 percent of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) without detected rest-frame UV/optical broad emission lines (type-2 AGN) do not show absorption in X-rays. The physical origin behind the apparently discordant optical/X-ray properties is not fully understood. Our study aims at providing insight into this issue by conducting a detailed analysis of the nuclear dust extinction and X-ray absorption properties of two AGN with low X-ray absorption and with high optical extinction, for which a rich set of high quality spectroscopic data is available from XMM-Newton archive data in X-rays and XSHOOTER proprietary data at UV-to-NIR wavelengths. In order to unveil the apparent mismatch, we have determined the A$_{\rm V}$/N$_{\rm H}$ and both the Super Massive Black Hole (SMBH) and the host galaxy masses. We find that the mismatch is caused in one case by an abnormally high dust-to-gas ratio that makes the UV/optical emission to appear more obscured than in the X-rays. For the other object we find that the dust-to-gas ratio is similar to the Galactic one but the AGN is hosted by a very massive galaxy so that the broad emission lines and the nuclear continuum are swamped by the star-light and difficult to detect.<br />Comment: 13 pages, 5 figures, 7 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS

Details

Database :
arXiv
Publication Type :
Report
Accession number :
edsarx.1704.01595
Document Type :
Working Paper
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx862