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The X-Ray and Mid-infrared Luminosities in Luminous Type 1 Quasars

Several recent studies have reported different intrinsic correlations between the active galactic nucleus (AGN) mid-IR luminosity (L-MIR) and the rest-frame 2-10 keV luminosity (L-X) for luminous quasars. To understand the origin of the difference in the observed L-X-L-MIR relations, we study a sample of 3247 spectroscopically confirmed type 1 AGNs collected from Bootes, XMM-COSMOS, XMM-XXL-North, and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey quasars in the Swift/XRT footprint spanning over four orders of magnitude in luminosity. We carefully examine how different observational constraints impact the observed L-X-L-MIR relations, including the inclusion of X-ray-nondetected objects, possible X-ray absorption in type 1 AGNs, X-ray flux limits, and star formation contamination. We find that the primary factor driving the different L-X-L-MIR relations reported in the literature is the X-ray flux limits for different studies. When taking these effects into account, we find that the X-ray luminosity and mid-IR luminosity (measured at rest-frame 6 mu m, or L-6 mu m) of our sample of type 1 AGNs follow a bilinear relation in the log-log plane: log L-X = (0.84 +/- 0.03) logL(6) (mu m) /10(45)erg s(-1) + (44.60. +/- 0.01) for L-6 (mu m) < 10(44.79) erg s(-1), and log L-X (0.40 +/- 0.03) log L-6 (mu m)/10(45) erg s(-1) + (44.51 +/- 0.01) for L-6 mu m. 1044.79 erg s(-1). This suggests that the luminous type 1 quasars have a shallower LX-L6mmcorrelation than the approximately linear relations found in local Seyfert galaxies. This result is consistent with previous studies reporting a luminosity-dependent LX-LMIRrelation and implies that assuming a linear LX-L-6 mu m relation to infer the neutral gas column density for X-ray absorption might overestimate the column densities in luminous quasars.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/623867
Date13 March 2017
CreatorsChen(陳建廷), Chien-Ting J., Hickox, Ryan C., Goulding, Andrew D., Stern, Daniel, Assef, Roberto, Kochanek, Christopher S., Brown, Michael J. I., Harrison, Chris M., Hainline, Kevin N., Alberts, Stacey, Alexander, David M., Brodwin, Mark, Moro, Agnese Del, Forman, William R., Gorjian, Varoujan, Jones, Christine, Murray, Stephen S., Pope, Alexandra, Rovilos, Emmanouel
ContributorsUniv Arizona, Steward Observ
PublisherIOP PUBLISHING LTD
Source SetsUniversity of Arizona
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeArticle
Rights© 2017. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.
Relationhttp://stacks.iop.org/0004-637X/837/i=2/a=145?key=crossref.320ba4a0fd4a69b7d1daf5528d9b6b7e

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