Jet directions in Seyfert galaxies: B and I imaging data

We present the results of broad-band B and I imaging observations for a sample of 88 Seyfert galaxies (29 Seyfert 1's and 59 Seyfert 2's), selected from a mostly isotropic property, the flux at 60$\mu$m. We also present the B and I imaging results for an additional sample of 20 Seyfert galaxies (7 Seyfert 1's and 13 Seyfert 2's), selected from the literature and known to have extended radio emission. The I band images are fitted with ellipses to determine the position angle and ellipticity of the host galaxy major axis. This information will be used in a future paper, combined with information from radio observations, to study the orientation of radio jets relative to the plane of their host galaxies (Kinney et al. 2000). Here we present surface brightness profiles and magnitudes in the B and I bands, as well as mean ellipticities and major axis position angles.Comment: To appear in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, June 2000. 48 pages, 7 tables, 19 gif and 11 postscript figures. Better quality figures can be obtained with the autho

The role of quasars in galaxy formation

We discuss evidence that quasars, and more generally radio jets, may have played an active role in the formation stage of galaxies by inducing star formation, i.e. through positive feedback. This mechanism first proposed in the 70's has been considered as anecdotic until now, contrary to the opposite effect that is generally put forward, the quenching of star formation in massive galaxies to explain the galaxy bimodality, downsizing and the universal black hole mass over bulge stellar mass ratio. This suggestion is based on the recent discovery of an ultra-luminous infrared galaxies, i.e. an extreme starburst, which appears to be triggered by a radio jet from the QSO HE0450-2958 at z=0.2863, together with the finding in several systems of an offset between molecular gas and quasars, which may be explained by the positive feedback effect of radio jets on their local environment.Comment: Invited talk, to appear in the Proceedings of the IAU Symposium 267, "Co-Evolution of Central Black Holes and Galaxies", B.M. Peterson, R.S. Somerville, T. Storchi-Bergmann, eds., in press (8 pages, 3 figures

Stellar Absorption Lines in the Spectra of Seyfert Galaxies

We have measured the strengths of Ca II Triplet and Mgb stellar absorption lines in the nuclear and off-nuclear spectra of Seyfert galaxies. These features are diluted to varying degrees by continuum emission from the active nucleus and from young stars. Ca II Triplet strengths can be enhanced if late-type supergiant stars dominate the near-IR light. Thus, objects with strong Ca II Triplet and weak Mgb lines may be objects with strong bursts of star formation. We find that for most of our sample the line strengths are at least consistent with dilution of a normal galaxy spectrum by a power law continuum, in accord with the standard model for AGN. However, for several Seyferts in our sample, it appears that dilution by a power law continuum cannot simultaneously explain strong Ca II Triplet and relatively weak Mgb. Also, these objects occupy the region of the IRAS color-color diagram characteristic of starburst galaxies. In these objects it appears that the optical to near-IR emission is dominated by late-type supergiants produced in a circumnuclear burst of star formation.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Advances in Space Research, presented at "The AGN/Host Galaxy Connection" as part of the Scientific Assembly of COSPAR, July 12-18 Nagoya, Japa

An Atlas of Warm AGN and Starbursts from the IRAS Deep Fields

We present 180 AGN candidates based on color selection from the IRAS slow-scan deep observations, with color criteria broadened from the initial Point-Source Catalog samples to include similar objects with redshifts up to z=1 and allowing for two-band detections. Spectroscopic identifications have been obtained for 80 (44%); some additional ones are secure based on radio detections or optical morphology, although yet unobserved spectroscopically. These spectroscopic identifications include 13 Sy 1 galaxies, 17 Sy 2 Seyferts, 29 starbursts, 7 LINER systems, and 13 emission-line galaxies so heavily reddened as to remain of ambiguous classification. The optical magnitudes range from R=12.0-20.5; counts suggest that incompleteness is important fainter than R=15.5. Redshifts extend to z=0.51, with a significant part of the sample at z>0.2. The sample includes slightly more AGN than star-forming systems among those where the spectra contain enough diagnostic feature to make the distinction. The active nuclei include several broad-line objects with strong Fe II emission, and composite objects with the absorption-line signatures of fading starbursts. These AGN with warm far-IR colors have little overlap with the "red AGN" identified with 2MASS; only a single Sy 1 was detected by 2MASS with J-K > 2. Some reliable IRAS detections have either very faint optical counterparts or only absorption-line galaxies, potentially being deeply obscured AGN. The IRAS detections include a newly identified symbiotic star, and several possible examples of the "Vega phenomenon", including dwarfs as cool as type K. Appendices detail these candidate stars, and the optical-identification content of a particularly deep set of high-latitude IRAS scans (probing the limits of optical identification from IRAS data alone).Comment: ApJ Suppl, in press. Figures converted to JPEG/GIF for better compression; PDF with full-resolution figures available before publication at http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/aoagn.pd

A unique X-ray unabsorbed Seyfert 2 galaxy IRAS F01475-0740

X-ray unabsorbed Seyfert 2 galaxies appear to have X-ray absorption column densities that are too low (NH < 10^22 cm-2) to explain the absence of broad emission lines in their optical spectra, challenging the standard AGN unification model. In this paper we report Suzaku exposure on the X-ray unabsorbed Seyfert 2 galaxy IRAS F01475-0740, in which a hidden broad line region was detected through spectropolarimetric observation. The X-ray data show rapid and significant variations on time scales down to 5 ks, indicating that we are viewing its central engine directly. A newly obtained optical spectrum and previous optical/X-ray data suggest that state transition is unlikely in this source. These make IRAS F01475-0740 a very peculiar X-ray unabsorbed Seyfert 2 galaxy which can only be explained by absorption from materials with abnormally high dust-to-gas ratio (by a factor of > 4 larger than Galactic). This is in contrast to most AGNs, which typically show dust-to-gas ratios 3 - 100 times lower than the Galactic.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, 1 table, accepted to the Astrophysical Journal Letter

A Hubble Space Telescope Survey of Extended [OIII]5007A Emission in a Far-Infrared Selected Sample of Seyfert Galaxies: Results

We present the results of a Hubble Space Telescope (HST) survey of extended [OIII] emission in a sample of 60 nearby Seyfert galaxies (22 Seyfert 1's and 38 Seyfert 2's), selected by mostly isotropic properties. The comparison between the semi major axis size of their [OIII] emitting regions (R_Maj) shows that Seyfert 1's and Seyfert 2's have similar distributions, which seems to contradict Unified Model predictions. We discuss possible ways to explain this result, which could be due either to observational limitations or the models used for the comparison with our data. We show that Seyfert 1 Narrow Line Regions (NLR's) are more circular and concentrated than Seyfert 2's, which can be attributed to foreshortening in the former. We find a good correlation between the NLR size and luminosity, following the relation R_Maj propto L([OIII])^0.33, which is flatter than a previous one found for QSO's and Seyfert 2's. We discuss possible reasons for the different results, and their implications to photoionization models. We confirm previous results which show that the [OIII] and radio emission are well aligned, and also find no correlation between the orientation of the extended [OIII] emission and the host galaxy major axis. This agrees with results showing that the torus axis and radio jet are not aligned with the host galaxy rotation axis, indicating that the orientation of the gas in the torus, and not the spin of the black hole, determine the orientation of the accretion disk, and consequently the orientation of the radio jet.Comment: 17 pages including 12 figures, to appear in Ap

Multicolour Optical Imaging of IR-Warm Seyfert Galaxies. I. Introduction and Sample Selection

The standard AGN unification models attempt to explain the diversity of observed AGN types by a few fundamental parameters, where orientation effects play a paramount role. Whether other factors, such as the evolutionary stage and the host galaxy properties are equally important parameters for the AGN diversity, is a key issue that we are addressing with the present data. Our sample of IR-selected Seyfert galaxies is based on the important discovery that their integrated IR spectrum contains an AGN signature. This being an almost isotropic property, our sample is much less affected by orientation/obscuration effects compared to most Seyfert samples. It therefore provides a test-bed for the orientation-dependent models of Seyferts, involving dusty tori. We have obtained multi-colour broad and narrow band imaging for a sample of mid-IR ``warm'' Seyferts and for a control sample of mid-IR ``cold'' galaxies. In the present paper we describe the sample selection and briefly discuss their IR properties. We then give an overview of the data collected and present broad-band images for all our objects. Finally, we summarize the main issues that will be addressed with these data in a series of forthcoming papers.Comment: 18 pages including 3 figures and 5 tables (tables 1,4,5 are included as independent files

The Unified Model of Active Galactic Nuclei: II. Evolutionary Connection

(Abbreviated) We assemble a sample composed of 243 nearby Seyfert galaxies with redshifts $z\le 0.05$ to test the unification scheme. The sample contains 94 BLS1s, 44 NLS1s, 36 X-ray absorbed HBLR S2s, 42 X-ray absorbed non-HBLR S2s and 27 X-ray unabsorbed Seyfert 2s (unabsorbed non-HBLR S2s and HBLR S2s). We find that: 1) NLS1s have less massive black hole masses than BLS1s; 2) HBLRS2s have the same mass distribution of the black holes with BLS1s; 3) the absorbed non-HBLR S2s have less massive black holes than HBLR S2s; 4) unabsorbed non-HBLR S2s have the most massive black holes. We thus have a queue of black hole masses from small to large: narrow to broad line Seyfert galaxies, providing new evidence for the evolutionary sequence of Seyfert galaxies. We find that the opening angles of the torus in NLS1s and absorbed non-HBLR S2s are significantly smaller than that in BLS1s and HBLR S2s. The growth of the black holes and increases of the opening angles of the tori determine the various appearances of Seyfert galaxies. We also find that the unabsorbed Seyfert 2 galaxies could be caused by low gas-to-dust ratios in the present sample. This indicates that the star formation histories could be different in the unabsorbed from in absorbed Seyfert 2 galaxies, showing evidence for suppressed star formation by black hole activities. We outline a new unification scheme based on the orientation hypothesis: Seyfert galaxies can be unified by including growth of black holes, Eddington ratios, changing opening angles of tori and gas-to-dust ratios in the tori. Seyfert galaxies are tending to finally evolve to unabsorbed non-HBLR Seyfert 2 galaxies, in which the black holes are accreting with low accretion rates and both the broad line region and dusty torus disappear.Comment: ApJ, vol 661 (2007), in pres