THE MOST LUMINOUS GALAXIES DISCOVERED BY WISE
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Dr., Pasadena, CA 91109 (United States)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1547 (United States)
- Núcleo de Astronomía de la Facultad deIngeniería, Universidad Diego Portales, Av. Ejército Libertador 441, Santiago (Chile)
- Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester, 1 University Road, Leicester, LE1 7RH (United Kingdom)
- Division of Physics, Math, and Astronomy, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771 (United States)
- Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125 (United States)
- Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, The Pennsylvania State University, 525 Davey Lab, University Park, PA 16802 (United States)
- Astronomy Department, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7701 (South Africa)
- National Radio Astronomy Observatory, 520 Edgemont Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903 (United States)
- Department of Physics, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061 (United States)
We present 20 Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE)-selected galaxies with bolometric luminosities L{sub bol} > 10{sup 14} L{sub ☉}, including five with infrared luminosities L{sub IR} ≡ L{sub (rest} {sub 8–1000} {sub μm)} > 10{sup 14} L{sub ☉}. These “extremely luminous infrared galaxies,” or ELIRGs, were discovered using the “W1W2-dropout” selection criteria which requires marginal or non-detections at 3.4 and 4.6 μm (W1 and W2, respectively) but strong detections at 12 and 22 μm in the WISE survey. Their spectral energy distributions are dominated by emission at rest-frame 4–10 μm, suggesting that hot dust with T{sub d} ∼ 450 K is responsible for the high luminosities. These galaxies are likely powered by highly obscured active galactic nuclei (AGNs), and there is no evidence suggesting these systems are beamed or lensed. We compare this WISE-selected sample with 116 optically selected quasars that reach the same L{sub bol} level, corresponding to the most luminous unobscured quasars in the literature. We find that the rest-frame 5.8 and 7.8 μm luminosities of the WISE-selected ELIRGs can be 30%–80% higher than that of the unobscured quasars. The existence of AGNs with L{sub bol} > 10{sup 14} L{sub ☉} at z > 3 suggests that these supermassive black holes are born with large mass, or have very rapid mass assembly. For black hole seed masses ∼10{sup 3} M{sub ☉}, either sustained super-Eddington accretion is needed, or the radiative efficiency must be <15%, implying a black hole with slow spin, possibly due to chaotic accretion.
- OSTI ID:
- 22522390
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 805, 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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