Kavli Affiliate: Claudio Ricci
| First 5 Authors: Houda Haidar, David J. Rosario, Almudena Alonso-Herrero, Miguel Pereira-Santaella, Ismael García-Bernete
| Summary:
Polar dust has been discovered in a number of local Active Galactic Nuclei
(AGN), with radiation-driven torus models predicting a wind to be its main
driver. However, little is known about its characteristics, spatial extent, or
connection to the larger scale outflows. We present the first JWST/MIRI study
aimed at imaging polar dust by zooming onto the heart of ESO 428-G14, part of
the GATOS survey of local AGN. We clearly detect extended mid-infrared (MIR)
emission within 200 pc from the nucleus. This polar structure is co-linear with
a radio jet and lies perpendicular to a molecular gas lane that feeds and
obscures the nucleus. The morphology of the MIR structure bears a striking
resemblance to that of gas ionised by the AGN in the narrow-line region (NLR).
We demonstrate that part of this spatial correspondence is due to contamination
within the JWST filter bands from strong emission lines. Correcting for the
contamination using ancillary spectroscopy, we find the morphology of the dust
continuum to be asymmetric around the nucleus and more compact, though still
clearly extended out to r ~ 100 pc. We estimate a temperature of the emitting
dust of ~ 120 K. Using simple models, we find that the heating of small dust
grains (~ 0.01 microns) by the radiation from the central AGN and/or radiative
jet-induced shocks is responsible for the extended MIR emission. Large-grained
dust, predicted by models of radiation-driven dusty winds from the torus, is
unlikely to be important. This has important implications for scales to which
AGN winds can carry dust and dense gas out into their host galaxies.
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