University of Leicester
Browse

THE MOST LUMINOUS GALAXIES DISCOVERED BY WISE

Download (1.2 MB)
journal contribution
posted on 2016-02-03, 11:46 authored by C-W. Tsai, P. R. M. Eisenhardt, J. Wu, D. Stern, R. J. Assef, Andrew William Blain, C. R. Bridge, D. J. Benford, R. M. Cutri, R. L. Griffith, T. H. Jarrett, C. J. Lonsdale, F. J. Masci, L. A. Moustakas, S. M. Petty, J. Sayers, S. A. Stanford, E. L. Wright, L. Yan, D. T. Leisawitz, F. Liu, A. K. Mainzer, I. S. McLean, D. L. Padgett, M. F. Skrutskie, C. R. Gelino, C. A. Beichman, S. Juneau
We present 20 Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)-selected galaxies with bolometric luminosities Lbol > 1014 LO;, including five with infrared luminosities LIR ≡ L(rest 8-1000 μm) > 1014 LO. These "extremely luminous infrared galaxies," or ELIRGs, were discovered using the "W1W2-dropout" selection criteria which requires marginal or non-detections at 3.4 and 4.6 μm (W1 and W2, respectively) but strong detections at 12 and 22 μm in the WISE survey. Their spectral energy distributions are dominated by emission at rest-frame 4-10 μm, suggesting that hot dust with Td ∼ 450 K is responsible for the high luminosities. These galaxies are likely powered by highly obscured active galactic nuclei (AGNs), and there is no evidence suggesting these systems are beamed or lensed. We compare this WISE-selected sample with 116 optically selected quasars that reach the same Lbol level, corresponding to the most luminous unobscured quasars in the literature. We find that the rest-frame 5.8 and 7.8 μm luminosities of the WISE-selected ELIRGs can be 30%-80% higher than that of the unobscured quasars. The existence of AGNs with Lbol > 1014 L at z > 3 suggests that these supermassive black holes are born with large mass, or have very rapid mass assembly. For black hole seed masses ∼103 MO, either sustained super-Eddington accretion is needed, or the radiative efficiency must be <15%, implying a black hole with slow spin, possibly due to chaotic accretion.

History

Citation

Astrophysical Journal, 2015, 805 (2), 90

Author affiliation

/Organisation/COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING/Department of Physics and Astronomy

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Published in

Astrophysical Journal

Publisher

IOP Publishing LTD

issn

0004-637X

eissn

1538-4357

Acceptance date

2015-03-04

Copyright date

2015

Available date

2016-02-03

Publisher version

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0004-637X/805/2/90/meta

Language

en

Usage metrics

    University of Leicester Publications

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC