New Method for Exploring Super-Eddington AGNs by Near-infrared Observations

Abstract

We propose a new method to explore the candidate super-Eddington active galactic nuclei (AGNs). We examine the properties of infrared (IR) emission from the inner edge of the dusty torus in AGNs, which are powered by super- or sub-Eddington accretion flows around black holes, by considering the dependence of the polar angle on the radiation flux of accretion flows (Watarai et al. 2005). We find that for super-Eddington AGNs, of which the mass accretion rate is more than 10^2 times larger than the Eddington rate, the ratio of the AGN IR luminosity and the disc bolometric luminosity is less than 10^-2, unless the half opening angle of the torus (theta_torus) is small (theta_torus <65 degree). This is due to the self-occultation effect, whereby the self-absorption at the outer region of the super-Eddington flow dilutes the illumination of the torus. Such a small luminosity ratio is not observed in sub-Eddington AGNs, whose mass accretion rate is comparable to or no more than 10 times larger than the Eddington mass accretion rate, except for extremely thin tori (theta_torus >85 degree). We also consider the properties of the near-IR (NIR) emission radiated from hot dust >1000 K. We find that super-Eddington AGNs have a ratio of the NIR luminosity to the bolometric luminosity, L_NIR,AGN/L_bol,disc, at least one order of magnitude smaller than for sub-Eddington AGNs for a wide range of half opening angle (theta_torus > 65 degree), for various types of dusty torus model. Thus, a relatively low L_NIR,AGN/L_bol,disc is a property that allows identification of candidate super-Eddington AGNs. Lastly, we discuss the possibility that NIR-faint quasars at redshift z=6 discovered by a recent deep SDSS survey may be young quasars whose black holes grow via super-Eddington accretion.

10pages, 6figures, 1table, Accepted for publication in MNRAS

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Cited by in corpus (19)

• Three-Dimensional General Relativistic Radiation Magnetohydrodynamical Simulation of Super-Eddington Accretion, using a new code HARMRAD with M1 Closure
• Reverberation Measurements of the Inner Radius of the Dust Torus in 17 Seyfert Galaxies
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• The First Hyper-Luminous Infrared Galaxy Discovered by WISE
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• On the Observational Difference Between the Accretion Disk-Corona Connections among Super- and Sub-Eddington Accreting Active Galactic Nuclei
• Accretion, Growth of Supermassive Black Holes, and Feedback in Galaxy Mergers
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• RADs energetics and constraints on emerging tori collisions around super-massive Kerr Black Holes
• Relating Kerr SMBHs in Active Galactic Nuclei to RAD configurations
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• Dragged surfaces. On the accretion tori in the ergoregion
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