Peering through the Dust: NuSTAR Observations of Two FIRST-2MASS Red Quasars

Abstract

Some reddened quasars appear to be transitional objects in the merger-induced black hole growth/galaxy evolution paradigm, where a heavily obscured nucleus starts to be unveiled by powerful quasar winds evacuating the surrounding cocoon of dust and gas. Hard X-ray observations are able to peer through this gas and dust, revealing the properties of circumnuclear obscuration. Here, we present NuSTAR and XMM-Newton/Chandra observations of FIRST-2MASS selected red quasars F2M 0830+3759 and F2M 1227+3214. We find that though F2M 0830+3759 is moderately obscured ($N_{\mathrm{H},\mathrm{Z}}=2.1\pm 0.2\times 10^{22}$ cm${}^{-2}$) and F2M 1227+3214 is mildly absorbed ($N_{\mathrm{H},\mathrm{Z}}=3.4_{-0.7}^{+0.8}\times 10^{21}$ cm${}^{-2}$) along the line-of-sight, heavier global obscuration may be present in both sources, with $N_{\mathrm{H},\mathrm{S}}=3.7_{-2.6}^{+4.1}\times 10^{23}$ cm${}^{-2}$ and $<5.5\times 10^{23}$ cm${}^{-2}$, for F2M 0830+3759 and F2M 1227+3214, respectively. F2M 0830+3759 also has an excess of soft X-ray emission below 1 keV which is well accommodated by a model where 7% of the intrinsic AGN X-ray emission is scattered into the line-of-sight. While F2M 1227+3214 has a dust-to-gas ratio ($E(B-V)$/$N_{\mathrm{H}}$) consistent with the Galactic value, the $E(B-V)$/$N_{\mathrm{H}}$ value for F2M 0830+3759 is lower than the Galactic standard, consistent with the paradigm that the dust resides on galactic scales while the X-ray reprocessing gas originates within the dust-sublimation zone of the broad-line-region. The X-ray and 6.1$\mu$m luminosities of these red quasars are consistent with the empirical relations derived for high-luminosity, unobscured quasars, extending the parameter space of obscured AGN previously observed by NuSTAR to higher luminosities.

arXiv commentaccepted for publication to ApJ; 34 pages, 8 figures, 5 tables

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