Chandra Observations of Excess Fe K$α$ Line Emission in Galaxies with High Star Formation Rates: X-ray Reflection on Galaxy Scales?

Kavli Affiliate: Claudio Ricci

| First 5 Authors: Wei Yan, Ryan C. Hickox, Chien-Ting J. Chen, Claudio Ricci, Alberto Masini

| Summary:

In active galactic nuclei (AGN), fluorescent Fe K$alpha$ (iron) line
emission is generally interpreted as originating from obscuring material around
a supermassive black hole (SMBH) on the scale of a few parsecs (pc). However,
recent Chandra studies indicate the existence of iron line emission extending
to kpc scales in the host galaxy. The connection between iron line emission and
large-scale material can be spatially resolved directly only in nearby
galaxies, but could be inferred in more distant AGNs by a connection between
line emission and star-forming gas and dust that is more extended than the
pc-scale torus. Here we present the results from a stacking analysis and X-ray
spectral fitting performed on sources in the Chandra Deep Field South (CDFS) 7
Ms observations. From the deep stacked spectra, we select sources with stellar
mass $log(M_*/M_odot)>10$ at $0.5<z<2$, obtaining 25 sources with high
infrared luminosity ($ {rm SFR}_{rm FIR} geq 17;M_{odot};{rm yr}^{-1}$)
and 32 sources below this threshold. We find that the equivalent width of the
iron line EW(Fe) is a factor of three higher with 3$sigma$ significance for
high infrared luminosity measured from Herschel observations, indicating a
connection between iron line emission and star-forming material on galaxy
scales. We show that there is no significant dependence in EW(Fe) on $M_*$ or
X-ray luminosity, suggesting the reflection of AGN X-ray emission over large
scales in their host galaxies may be widespread.

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