Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007aas...21011202l&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society Meeting 210, #112.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.236
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Dust reprocesses the intrinsic short-wavelength radiation of active galactic nuclei and starbursts, and the light ultimately emerges in the infrared. The resulting thermal emission does not reveal the nature of the underlying source. While far-infrared flux ratios or "colors" have been used to identify candidate AGN, the success of this selection is a consequence of the distribution of dusty material around optically-identifiable AGN. The far-infrared flux ratio is not a direct signature of the AGN continuum that heats the dust. Numerical radiative transfer models demonstrate that both AGN and starburst spectra produce the same IR emission when embedded in the same dusty environments. Preferentially bluer far-infrared spectra are characteristic of sources located in inhomogeneous rather than continuous media, independent of the spectral energy distributions of the underlying sources themselves.
Observations show systematic differences between known AGN and starburst galaxies in their far-infrared spectra, which are the result of their differing nuclear environments. However, these results cannot be directly applied to identify the energy source of ultraluminous infrared galaxies, where galactic interactions govern the distribution of dust.
I acknowledge work supported by the NSF under grant number 0237291.
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