The Dust - AGN Connection in Early-Type Galaxies

Details The Dust - AGN Connection in Early-Type Galaxies The Dust - AGN Connection in Early-Type Galaxies

Mar 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008sptz.prop50100m&link_type=abstract

Spitzer Proposal ID #50100

Physics

Scientific paper

While many efforts over the years have searched for evidence of the fueling mechanism(s) of Active Galactic Nuclei, we recently identified the first substantial difference between the hosts of AGN and inactive galaxies: all AGN in early-type galaxies show evidence for circumnuclear dust, while dust is only present in a minority (about 25%) of inactive, early-type galaxies. These observations suggest that circumnuclear dust, within hundreds of parsecs of the centers of these galaxies, is a necessary condition for fueling the central, supermassive black hole, and that the AGN may affect the observed dust morphology or its absence. However, this analysis was based on HST observations that were primarily sensitive to clumpy dust on small scales, rather than the diffusely distributed dust identified in many infrared studies of elliptical galaxies. As over 90% of our sample (60 galaxies) have archival Spitzer IRAC and MIPS observations, we propose to search for diffuse dust between our well-matched sample of AGN and inactive galaxies and determine if these pronounced differences also hold for diffuse dust. We will also use these infrared observations to estimate the total attentuation by dust and place constraints on the total dust mass in ellipticals, which can be used to infer the dust survival time against sputtering.

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