Abstract
We investigate the extreme X-ray variability of a
z
= 1.608 active galactic nucleus in the 7 Ms Chandra Deep Field-South (XID 403), which showed two significant X-ray brightening events. In ...the first event, XID 403 brightened by a factor of >2.5 in ≲6.1 rest-frame days in the observed-frame 0.5–5 keV band. The event lasted for ≈5.0–7.3 days, and then XID 403 dimmed by a factor of >6.0 in ≲6.1 days. After ≈1.1–2.5 yr in the rest frame (including long observational gaps), it brightened again, with the 0.5–5 keV flux increasing by a factor of >12.6. The second event lasted over 251 days, and the source remained bright until the end of the 7 Ms exposure. The spectrum is a steep power law (photon index Γ = 2.8 ± 0.3) without obscuration during the second outburst, and the rest-frame 2–10 keV luminosity reaches
1.5
−
0.5
+
0.8
×
10
43
erg
s
−
1
; there is no significant spectral evolution within this epoch. The infrared-to-UV spectral energy distribution of XID 403 is dominated by the host galaxy. There is no significant optical/UV variability and
R
-band (rest-frame ≈2500 Å) brightening contemporaneous with the X-ray brightening. The extreme X-ray variability is likely due to two X-ray unveiling events, where the line of sight to the corona is no longer shielded by high-density gas clumps in a small-scale dust-free absorber. XID 403 is probably a high-redshift analog of local narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies, and the X-ray absorber is a powerful accretion disk wind. On the other hand, we cannot exclude the possibility that XID 403 is an unusual candidate for tidal disruption events.
We present source catalogs for the 4 Ms Chandra Deep Field-South (CDF-S), which is the deepest Chandra survey to date and covers an area of 464.5 arcmin2. We provide a main Chandra source catalog, ...which contains 740 X-ray sources that are detected with WAVDETECT at a false-positive probability threshold of 10--5 in at least one of three X-ray bands (0.5-8 keV, full band; 0.5-2 keV, soft band; and 2-8 keV, hard band) and also satisfy a binomial-probability source-selection criterion of P < 0.004 (i.e., the probability of sources not being real is less than 0.004); this approach is designed to maximize the number of reliable sources detected. A total of 300 main-catalog sources are new compared to the previous 2 Ms CDF-S main-catalog sources. We determine X-ray source positions using centroid and matched-filter techniques and obtain a median positional uncertainty of 042. We also provide a supplementary catalog, which consists of 36 sources that are detected with WAVDETECT at a false-positive probability threshold of 10--5, satisfy the condition of 0.004 < P < 0.1, and have an optical counterpart with R < 24. Multiwavelength identifications, basic optical/infrared/radio photometry, and spectroscopic/photometric redshifts are provided for the X-ray sources in the main and supplementary catalogs. Seven hundred sixteen (97%) of the 740 main-catalog sources have multiwavelength counterparts, with 673 (94% of 716) having either spectroscopic or photometric redshifts. The 740 main-catalog sources span broad ranges of full-band flux and 0.5-8 keV luminosity; the 300 new main-catalog sources span similar ranges although they tend to be systematically lower. Basic analyses of the X-ray and multiwavelength properties of the sources indicate that >75% of the main-catalog sources are active galactic nuclei (AGNs); of the 300 new main-catalog sources, about 35% are likely normal and starburst galaxies, reflecting the rise of normal and starburst galaxies at the very faint flux levels uniquely accessible to the 4 Ms CDF-S. Near the center of the 4 Ms CDF-S (i.e., within an off-axis angle of 3'), the observed AGN and galaxy source densities have reached 9800+1300 -- 1100 deg--2 and 6900+1100 -- 900 deg--2, respectively. Simulations show that our main catalog is highly reliable and is reasonably complete. The mean backgrounds (corrected for vignetting and exposure-time variations) are 0.063 and 0.178 counts Ms--1 pixel--1 (for a pixel size of 0492) for the soft and hard bands, respectively; the majority of the pixels have zero background counts. The 4 Ms CDF-S reaches on-axis flux limits of 3.2 X 10--17, 9.1 X 10--18, and 5.5 X 10--17 erg cm--2 s--1 for the full, soft, and hard bands, respectively. An increase in the CDF-S exposure time by a factor of 2-2.5 would provide further significant gains and probe key unexplored discovery space.
We present a detailed X-ray spectral analysis of the sources in the 1Ms catalog of the Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS) taking advantage of optical spectroscopy and photometric redshifts for 321 ...extragalactic sources out of the total sample of 347 sources. As a default spectral model, we adopt a power law with slope Gamma with an intrinsic redshifted absorption N sub(H), a fixed Galactic absorption and an unresolved Fe emission line. For 82 X-ray bright sources, we are able to perform the X-ray spectral analysis leaving both Gamma and N sub(H) free. The weighted mean value for the slope of the power law is < Gamma > 1.75 plus or minus 0.02, and the distribution of best fit values shows an intrinsic dispersion of sigma sub(int) 0.30. We do not find hints of a correlation between the spectral index Gamma and the intrinsic absorption column density N sub(H). We then investigate the absorption distribution for the whole sample, deriving the N sub(H) values in faint sources by fixing Gamma = 1.8. We also allow for the presence of a scattered component at soft energies with the same slope of the main power law, and for a pure reflection spectrum typical of Compton-thick AGN. We detect the presence of a scattered soft component in 8 sources; we also identify 14 sources showing a reflection-dominated spectrum. The latter are referred to as Compton-thick AGN candidates. By correcting for both incompleteness and sampling-volume effects, we recover the intrinsic N sub(H) distribution representative of the whole AGN population, f(N sub(H))dN sub(H), from the observed one. f(N sub(H)) shows a lognormal shape, peaking around log(N sub(H)) 23.1 and wither sigma 1.1. Interestingly, such a distribution shows continuity between the population of Compton-thin and that of Compton-thick AGN. We find that the fraction of absorbed sources (with N sub(H) > 10 super(22) cm super(-2)) in the sample is constant (at the level of about 75%) or moderately increasing with redshift. Finally, we compare the optical classification to the X-ray spectral properties, confirming that the correspondence of unabsorbed (absorbed) X-ray sources to optical type I (type II) AGN is accurate for at least 80% of the sources with spectral identification (1/3 of the total X-ray sample).
We report ALMA Cycle 0 observations at 1.3 mm of LESS J033229.4-275619 (XID403), an ultraluminous infrared galaxy at z = 4.75 in the Chandra Deep Field South hosting a Compton-thick QSO. The source ...is not resolved in our data at a resolution of ~0.75 arcsec, placing an upper-limit of 2.5 kpc to the half-light radius of the continuum emission from heated-dust. After deconvolving for the beam size, however, we found a ~3σ indication of an intrinsic source size of 0.27 ± 0.08 arcsec (Gaussian FWHM), which would correspond to rhalf ~ 0.9 ± 0.3 kpc. We build the far-infrared SED of XID403 by combining datapoints from both ALMA and Herschel and fit it with a modified blackbody spectrum. For the first time, we measure the dust temperature Td = 58.5 ± 5.3 K in this system, which is comparable to what has been observed in other high-z submillimeter galaxies. The measured star formation rate is SFR = 1020 ± 150 M⊙ yr-1, in agreement with previous estimates at lower S/N. Based on the measured SFR and source size, we constrain the SFR surface density to be ΣSFR > 26M⊙ yr-1 kpc-2 (~200M⊙ yr-1 kpc-2 for rhalf ~ 0.9 kpc). The compactness of this starburst is comparable to what has been observed in other local and high-z starburst galaxies. If the gas mass measured from previous CII and CO(2–1) observations at low resolution is confined within the same dust region, assuming rhalf ~ 0.9 ± 0.3 kpc, this would produce a column density of NH ~ 0.3−1.1 × 1024 cm-2 towards the central SMBH, similar to the column density of ≈1.4 × 1024 cm-2 measured from the X-rays. Then, in principle, if both gas and dust were confined on sub-kpc scales, this would be sufficient to produce the observed X-ray column density without any need of a pc-scale absorber (e.g. the torus postulated by Unified Models). We speculate that the high compactness of star formation, together with the presence of a powerful AGN, likely produce an outflowing wind. This would be consistent with the ~350 km s-1 velocity shift observed between the Lyα emission and the submm lines (CII, CO(2–1), NII) and with the highly-ionized Fe emission line at ~6.9 keV rest-frame tentatively observed in the X-ray spectrum. Finally, our observations show that, besides the mass, star formation rate and gas depletion timescale, XID403 has also the right size to be one of the progenitors of the compact quiescent massive galaxies seen at z ~ 3.
We report the discovery of a galaxy overdensity around a Compton-thick Fanaroff–Riley type II (FRII) radio galaxy at z = 1.7 in the deep multiband survey around the z = 6.3 quasi-stellar object (QSO) ...SDSS J1030+0524. Based on a 6 h VLT/MUSE and on a 4 h LBT/LUCI observation, we identify at least eight galaxy members in this structure with spectroscopic redshift z = 1.687 − 1.699, including the FRII galaxy at z = 1.699. Most members are distributed within 400 kpc from the FRII core. Nonetheless, the whole structure is likely much more extended, as one of the members was serendipitously found at ∼800 kpc projected separation. The classic radio structure of the FRII itself extends for ∼600 kpc across the sky. Most of the identified overdensity members are blue, compact galaxies that are actively forming stars at rates of ∼8–60 M⊙ yr−1. For the brightest of them, a half-light radius of 2.2 ± 0.8 kpc at 8000 Å rest-frame was determined based on adaptive optics-assisted observations with LBT/SOUL in the Ks band. We do not observe any strong galaxy morphological segregation or concentration around the FRII core. This suggests that the structure is far from being virialized and likely constitutes the progenitor of a local massive galaxy group or cluster caught in its main assembly phase. Based on a 500 ks Chandra ACIS-I observation, we found that the FRII nucleus hosts a luminous QSO (L2 − 10 keV = 1.3 × 1044 erg s−1, intrinsic and rest-frame) that is obscured by Compton-thick absorption (NH = 1.5 ± 0.6 × 1024 cm−2). Under standard bolometric corrections, the total measured radiative power (Lrad ∼ 4 × 1045 erg s−1) is similar to the jet kinetic power that we estimated from radio observations at 150 MHz (Pkin = 6.3 × 1045 erg s−1), in agreement with what is observed in powerful jetted AGN. Our Chandra observation is the deepest so far for a distant FRII within a galaxy overdensity. It revealed significant diffuse X-ray emission within the region that is covered by the overdensity. In particular, X-ray emission extending for ∼240 kpc is found around the eastern lobe of the FRII. Four out of the six MUSE star-forming galaxies in the overdensity are distributed in an arc-like shape at the edge of this diffuse X-ray emission. These objects are concentrated within 200 kpc in the plane of the sky and within 450 kpc in radial separation. Three of them are even more concentrated and fall within 60 kpc in both transverse and radial distance. The probability of observing four out of the six z = 1.7 sources by chance at the edge of the diffuse emission is negligible. In addition, these four galaxies have the highest specific star formation rates of the MUSE galaxies in the overdensity and lie above the main sequence of field galaxies of equal stellar mass at z = 1.7. We propose that the diffuse X-rays originate from an expanding bubble of gas that is shock heated by the FRII jet, and that star formation is promoted by the compression of the cold interstellar medium of the galaxies around the bubble, which may be remarkable evidence of positive AGN feedback on cosmological scales. We emphasize that our conclusions about the feedback are robust because even assuming that the diffuse X-ray emission arises from inverse Compton scattering of photons of the cosmic microwave background by the relativistic electrons in the radio lobe, star formation may be promoted by the nonthermal pressure of the expanding lobe.
ABSTRACT
We quantify the importance of mass accretion during active galactic nuclei (AGN) phases in the growth of supermassive black holes (BHs) by comparing the mass function of black holes in the ...Local Universe with that expected from AGN relics, which are black holes grown entirely with mass accretion during AGN phases. The local BH mass function (BHMF) is estimated by applying the well‐known correlations between BH mass, bulge luminosity and stellar velocity dispersion to galaxy luminosity and velocity functions. We find that different correlations provide the same BHMF only if they have the same intrinsic dispersion. The density of supermassive black holes in the Local Universe that we estimate is ρBH= 4.6+1.9−1.4h20.7× 105 M⊙ Mpc−3. The relic BHMF is derived from the continuity equation with the only assumption that AGN activity is due to accretion on to massive BHs and that merging is not important. We find that the relic BHMF at z= 0 is generated mainly at z < 3 where the major part of the growth of a BH takes place. Moreover, BH growth is antihierarchical in the sense that smaller BHs (MBH < 107 M⊙) grow at lower redshifts (z < 1) with respect to more massive ones (z∼ 1–3). Unlike previous work, we find that the BHMF of AGN relics is perfectly consistent with the local BHMF, indicating that local BHs were mainly grown during AGN activity. This agreement is obtained while satisfying, at the same time, the constraints imposed from the X‐ray background (XRB). The comparison between the local and relic BHMFs also suggests that the merging process is not important in shaping the relic BHMF, at least at low redshifts (z < 3), and allows us to estimate the average radiative efficiency (ɛ), the ratio between emitted and Eddington luminosity (λ) and the average lifetime of active BHs. Our analysis thus suggests the following scenario: local BHs grew during AGN phases in which accreting matter was converted into radiation with efficiencies ɛ= 0.04–0.16 and emitted at a fraction λ= 0.1–1.7 of the Eddington luminosity. The average total lifetime of these active phases ranges from ≃ 4.5 × 108 yr for MBH < 108 M⊙ to ≃ 1.5 × 108 yr for MBH > 109 M⊙, but can become as large as ∼109 yr for the lowest acceptable ɛ and λ values.
We address the as yet unexplored issue of outflows induced by exponentially growing power sources, focusing on early supermassive black holes (BHs). We assumed that these objects grow to 109M⊙ by z = ...6 by Eddington-limited accretion and convert 5% of their bolometric output into a wind. We first considered the case of energy-driven and momentum-driven outflows expanding in a region where the gas and total mass densities are uniform and equal to the average values in the Universe at z> 6. We derived analytic solutions for the evolution of the outflow: for an exponentially growing power with e-folding time tSal, we find that the late time expansion of the outflow radius is also exponential, with e-folding time of 5tSal and 4tSal in the energy-driven and momentum-driven limit, respectively. We then considered energy-driven outflows produced by quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) at the centre of early dark matter halos of different masses and powered by BHs growing from different seeds. We followed the evolution of the source power and of the gas and dark matter density profiles in the halos from the beginning of the accretion until z = 6. The final bubble radius and velocity do not depend on the seed BH mass, but are instead smaller for larger halo masses. At z = 6, bubble radii in the range 50–180 kpc and velocities in the range 400–1000 km s-1 are expected for QSOs hosted by halos in the mass range 3 × 1011–1013M⊙. These radius and velocity scales compare well with those measured for the outflowing gas in the z = 6.4 QSO SDSS J1148+5251. By the time the QSO is observed, we found that the total thermal energy injected within the bubble in the case of an energy-driven outflow is Eth ~ 5 × 1060 erg. This is in excellent agreement with the value of Eth = (6.2 ± 1.7) × 1060 erg measured through the detection of the thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect around a large population of luminous QSOs at lower redshifts. This suggests that QSO outflows are closer to the energy-driven limit than to the momentum-driven limit. We investigated the stability of the expanding gas shell in the case of an energy-driven supersonic outflow propagating within a dark matter halo with Mh = 3 × 1011M⊙ at z = 6. We found that the shell is Rayleigh-Taylor unstable already at early times and, by means of a simple model, we investigated the fate of the fragments detaching from the shell. We found that these fragments should rapidly evaporate because of the extremely high temperature of the hot gas bubble if this does not cool. Since the only effective cooling mechanism for such a gas is inverse Compton by the cosmic microwave background (CMB) photons (IC-CMB), which is important only at z ≥ 6, we speculate that such shell fragments may be observed only around high-z QSOs, where IC-CMB cooling of the bubble gas can prevent their evaporation.
Abstract
We present the joint Chandra, XMM-Newton, and NuSTAR analysis of two nearby Seyfert galaxies, NGC 3081 and ESO 565-G019. These are the only two having Chandra data in a larger sample of 10 ...low-redshift (
z
≤ 0.05), candidates Compton-thick (CT) Active Galactic Nuclei selected in the 15–150 keV band with Swift-BAT that were still lacking NuSTAR data. Our spectral analysis, performed using physically motivated models, provides an estimate of both the line-of-sight (l.o.s.) and average (
N
H,
S
) column densities of the two torii. NGC 3081 has a Compton-thin l.o.s. column density
N
H,
z
= 0.58–0.62 × 10
24
cm
−2
, but the
N
H,
S
, beyond the CT threshold (
N
H,
S
= 1.41–1.78 × 10
24
cm
−2
), suggests a “patchy” scenario for the distribution of the circumnuclear matter. ESO 565-G019 has both CT l.o.s. and
N
H,
S
column densities (
N
H,
z
> 2.31 × 10
24
cm
−2
and
N
H,
S
> 2.57 × 10
24
cm
−2
, respectively). The use of physically motivated models, coupled with the broad energy range covered by the data (0.6–70 keV and 0.6–40 keV, for NGC 3081 and ESO 565-G019, respectively) allows us to constrain the covering factor of the obscuring material, which is
C
TOR
= 0.63–0.82 for NGC 3081, and
C
TOR
= 0.39–0.65 for ESO 565-G019.
We present the X-ray spectral analysis of the 390 brightest extragalactic sources in the Chandra-Cosmic Evolution Survey catalogue, showing at least 70 net counts in the 0.5-7 keV band. This sample ...has a 100 per cent completeness in optical-infrared identification, with ∼75 per cent of the sample having a spectroscopic redshift and ∼25 per cent a photometric redshift. Our analysis allows us to accurately determine the intrinsic absorption, the broad-band continuum shape (Γ) and intrinsic L
2-10 distributions, with an accuracy better than 30 per cent on the spectral parameters for 95 per cent of the sample. The sample is equally divided in type 1 (49.7 per cent) and type 2 active galactic nuclei (48.7 per cent) plus few passive galaxies at low z. We found a significant difference in the distribution of Γ of type 1 and type 2, with small intrinsic dispersion, a weak correlation of Γ with L
2−10 and a large population (15 per cent of the sample) of high luminosity, highly obscured (QSO2) sources. The distribution of the X-ray/Optical flux ratio (Log(F
X
/F
i
)) for type 1 is narrow (0 < X/O < 1), while type 2 are spread up to X/O = 2. The X/O correlates well with the amount of X-ray obscuration. Finally, a small sample of Compton-thick candidates and peculiar sources is presented. In the appendix, we discuss the comparison between Chandra and XMM-Newton spectra for 280 sources in common. We found a small systematic difference, with XMM-Newton spectra that tend to have softer power laws and lower obscuration.
We present VLT/X-Shooter and MUSE spectroscopy of a faint F814W = 28.60 + or - 0.33 (M sub(UV)=-17.0, low-mass (<, ~10 super(7)M sub(middo t in circle)), and compact (R sub(eff)= 62 pc) freshly ...star-forming galaxy at z= 3.1169 magnified (16x) by the Hubble Frontier Fields galaxy cluster Abell S1063. Gravitational lensing allows for a significant jump toward low-luminosity regimes, in moderately high-resolution spectroscopy (R= lambda /dlambda ~ 3000-7400). We measured C IV lambda 1548, 1550, He II lambda 1640, O IIIlambda 1661,1666, C IIIlambdalambda 1907,1909, Hbeta, OIIIlambdalambda 4959,5007 emission lines with <, ~ 50 km s super(-1) and (de-lensed) fluxes spanning the interval 1.0 x 10 super(-19)-2 x 10 super(-18) erg s super(-1) cm super(-2) at signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) = 4-30. The double-peaked Lyalpha emission with Deltanured - blue) = 280 (+ or -7) km s super(-1) and de-lensed fluxes 2.4 sub((blue)) 8.5 sub((red)) x 10 super(-18) erg s super(-1) cm super(-2)(S/N = 38 sub((blue)) 110 sub((red))) indicate a low column density of neutral hydrogen gas consistent with a highly ionized interstellar medium as also inferred from the large OIIIlambda 5007/ OIIlambda 3727 > 10 ratio. We detect C IV lambda 1548,1550 resonant doublet in emission, each component with FWHM <, ~ 45 km s super(-1) and redshifted by +51(+ or -10) km s super(-1) relative to the systemic redshift. We interpret this as nebular emission tracing an expanding optically thin interstellar medium. Both C IV lambda 1548,1550 and He II lambda 1640 suggest the presence of hot and massive stars (with a possible faint active galactic nucleus). The ultraviolet slope is remarkably blue, beta =-2.95 + or - 0.20 (F sub(lambda)= lambda super(beta)), consistent with a dust-free and young <, ~20 Myr galaxy. Line ratios suggest an oxygen abundance 12 + log(O/H) < 7.8. We are witnessing an early episode of star formation in which a relatively low N sub(H I) and negligible dust attenuation might favor a leakage of ionizing radiation. This galaxy currently represents a unique low-luminosity reference object for future studies of the reionization epoch with the James Webb Space Telescope.
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