THE ORIGIN OF DOUBLE-PEAKED NARROW LINES IN ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI. I. VERY LARGE ARRAY DETECTIONS OF DUAL AGNs AND AGN OUTFLOWS
- Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309 (United States)
- Center for Cosmology, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697 (United States)
- Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544 (United States)
We have examined a subset of 18 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) drawn from a sample of 81 galaxies that possess double-peaked narrow optical emission line spectra in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, have 2 optical AGN emission components separated by >0.″2, and are detected in the Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-centimeters survey. Without follow-up observations, the sources of the double-peaked narrow emission lines are uncertain, and may be produced by kiloparsec-scale separation dual active supermassive black holes, AGN outflows, or disk rotation. In this work, we propose a new methodology to characterize double-peaked narrow emission line galaxies based on optical long-slit spectroscopy and high-resolution multi-band Very Large Array observations. The nature of the radio emission in the sample galaxies is varied. Of the 18 galaxies, we detect 2 compact flat-spectrum radio cores with projected spatial separations on the sky between 0.6 and 1.6 kpc in 3 galaxies: J1023+3243, J1158+3231, and J1623+0808. The two radio sources are spatially coincident with the two optical components of ionized gas with AGN-like line ratios, which confirms the presence of dual AGNs in these three galaxies. Dual AGNs account for only ∼15% (3/18) of the double-peaked AGNs in our sample. Gas kinematics produce ∼75% (13/18) of the double-peaked narrow emission lines, distributed in the following way: seven AGN wind-driven outflows, five radio-jet driven outflows, and one rotating narrow-line region. The remaining 10% (2/18) are ambiguous cases. Our method demonstrates the power of spatially resolved spectroscopy and high-resolution radio observations for the identification of AGN outflows and AGN pairs with angular separations as small as 0.″18.
- OSTI ID:
- 22521923
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 813, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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