The X-ray and Mid-Infrared luminosities in Luminous Type 1 Quasars

Abstract

Several recent studies have reported different intrinsic correlations between the 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 3,247 spectroscopically confirmed type 1 AGNs collected from Boötes, XMM-COSMOS, XMM-XXL-North, and the SDSS 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 non-detected 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: $\log L_X=(0.84\pm 0.03)\times \log L_{6\mu m}/10^{45}\mathrm{erg}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}+(44.60\pm 0.01)$ for $L_{6\mu m}<10^{44.79}\mathrm{erg}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$, and $\log L_X=(0.40\pm 0.03)\times \log L_{6\mu m}/10^{45}\mathrm{erg}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}+(44.51\pm 0.01)$ for $L_{6\mu m}\ge 10^{44.79}\mathrm{erg}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$. This suggests that the luminous type 1 quasars have a shallower $L_X-L_{MIR}$ correlation than the approximately linear relations found in local Seyfert galaxies. This result is consistent with previous studies reporting a luminosity-dependent $L_X-L_{MIR}$ relation, and implies that assuming a linear $L_X-L_{MIR}$ relation to infer the neutral gas column density for X-ray absorption might overestimate the column densities in luminous quasars.

The parameters in Equation 2 of the previous version were derived without including XXL-North, and are inconsistent with the parameters reported in the abstract. An erratum is submitted to ApJ and can be downloaded at https://ctjchen.github.io/lxl6umerratum.pdf

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