Energetic nuclear transients in luminous and ultraluminous infrared galaxies
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
| Autores: | , , , , , , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2022 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) |
| Repositorio: | DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:digital.csic.es:10261/282882 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10261/282882 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Black hole physics Galaxies: starburst Galaxies: nuclei Infrared: general |
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ES_1167aecfa9bfd017529ec00c5f7edd6c |
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oai:digital.csic.es:10261/282882 |
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España |
| title |
Energetic nuclear transients in luminous and ultraluminous infrared galaxies |
| spellingShingle |
Energetic nuclear transients in luminous and ultraluminous infrared galaxies Reynolds, Thomas M. Black hole physics Galaxies: starburst Galaxies: nuclei Infrared: general |
| title_short |
Energetic nuclear transients in luminous and ultraluminous infrared galaxies |
| title_full |
Energetic nuclear transients in luminous and ultraluminous infrared galaxies |
| title_fullStr |
Energetic nuclear transients in luminous and ultraluminous infrared galaxies |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Energetic nuclear transients in luminous and ultraluminous infrared galaxies |
| title_sort |
Energetic nuclear transients in luminous and ultraluminous infrared galaxies |
| author |
Reynolds, Thomas M. |
| author_facet |
Reynolds, Thomas M. Mattila, S. Efstathiou, A. Kankare, E. Kool, E. Ryder, S. Peña-Moñino, Luis Pérez-Torres, Miguel A. |
| author_role |
author |
| author2 |
Mattila, S. Efstathiou, A. Kankare, E. Kool, E. Ryder, S. Peña-Moñino, Luis Pérez-Torres, Miguel A. |
| author2_role |
author author author author author author author |
| topic |
Black hole physics Galaxies: starburst Galaxies: nuclei Infrared: general |
| topic_facet |
Black hole physics Galaxies: starburst Galaxies: nuclei Infrared: general |
| description |
Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| publishDate |
2022 |
| format |
article |
| status_str |
publishedVersion |
| url |
http://hdl.handle.net/10261/282882 |
| eu_rights_str_mv |
openAccess |
| publisher |
EDP Sciences |
| institution |
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) |
| collection |
DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC |
| reponame_str |
DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC |
| instname_str |
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) |
| spelling |
Energetic nuclear transients in luminous and ultraluminous infrared galaxies Reynolds, Thomas M. Mattila, S. Efstathiou, A. Kankare, E. Kool, E. Ryder, S. Peña-Moñino, Luis Pérez-Torres, Miguel A. Black hole physics Galaxies: starburst Galaxies: nuclei Infrared: general Open Access article, published by EDP Sciences, under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Energetic nuclear outbursts have been discovered in luminous and ultraluminous infrared galaxies (U/LIRGs) at unexpectedly high rates. To investigate this population of transients, we performed a search in mid-IR data from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite and its NEOWISE survey to detect and characterise luminous and smoothly evolving transients in a sample of 215 U/LIRGs. We report three new transients, all with ΔL > 1043 erg s−1, in addition to two previously known cases. Their host galaxies are all part of major galaxy mergers, and through radiative transfer model fitting we find that all have a significant contribution from an active galactic nucleus (AGN). We characterised the transients through measurements of their luminosities and resulting energetics, all of which are between 1050.9 erg and 1052.2 erg. The IR emission of the five transients was found to be consistent with re-radiation by the hot dust of emission at shorter wavelengths, presumably originating from an accretion event, onto the supermassive black hole. The corresponding transient rate of (1.6–4.6) × 10−3 yr−1 galaxy−1 is over an order of magnitude higher than the rate of large amplitude flares shown by AGN in the optical. We suggest that the observed transients are part of a dust-obscured population of tidal disruption events (TDEs) that have remained out of the reach of optical surveys due to the obscuring dust. In one case, this is supported by our radio observations. We also discuss other plausible explanations. The observed rate of events is significantly higher than optical TDE rates, which can be expected in U/LIRG hosts undergoing a major galaxy merger with increased stellar densities in the nuclear regions. Continued searches for such transients and their multi-wavelength follow-up is required to constrain their rate and nature. © T. M. Reynolds et al. 2022. T.M.R. acknowledges the financial support of the Jenny and Antti Wihuri foundation and the Vilho, Yrjö and Kalle Väisälä Foundation of the Finnish academy of Science and Letters. E.C.K. acknowledges support from the G.R.E.A.T research environment funded by Vetenskapsrådet, the Swedish Research Council, under project number 2016-06012, and support from The Wenner-Gren Foundations. This publication makes use of data products from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, and NEOWISE, which is a project of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology. WISE and NEOWISE are funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive, which is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and operated by the California Institute of Technology. This work is partially based on observations obtained as part of the VISTA Hemisphere Survey, ESO Progam, 179.A-2010 (PI: McMahon). This work is based in part on observations made with the Nordic Optical Telescope, owned in collaboration by the University of Turku and Aarhus University, and operated jointly by Aarhus University, the University of Turku and the University of Oslo, representing Denmark, Finland and Norway, the University of Iceland and Stockholm University at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Spain, of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. This work is partly based on the NUTS2 programme carried out at the NOT. NUTS2 is funded in part by the Instrument Center for Danish Astrophysics (IDA). The Australia Telescope Compact Array is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility (grid.421683.a) which is funded by the Australian Government for operation as a National Facility managed by CSIRO. We acknowledge the Gomeroi people as the traditional owners of the Observatory site. The Australian SKA Pathfinder is part of the Australia Telescope National Facility (grid.421683.a) which is managed by CSIRO. Operation of ASKAP is funded by the Australian Government with support from the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy. ASKAP uses the resources of the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre. Establishment of ASKAP, the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory and the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre are initiatives of the Australian Government, with support from the Government of Western Australia and the Science and Industry Endowment Fund. We acknowledge the Wajarri Yamatji people as the traditional owners of the Observatory site. This research made use of Astropy5, a community-developed core Python package for Astronomy (Astropy Collaboration 2013, 2018). With funding from the Spanish government through the Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence accreditation SEV-2017-0709. Peer reviewed EDP Sciences http://hdl.handle.net/10261/282882 |
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2022 |
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Efstathiou, A. Kankare, E. Kool, E. Mattila, S. Peña-Moñino, Luis Pérez-Torres, Miguel A. Reynolds, Thomas M. Ryder, S. |
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EDP Sciences |
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6,924472 |