X-rays as dominant excitation mechanism of [Fe ii] and H2 emission lines in active galaxies

Details X-rays as dominant excitation mechanism of [Fe ii] and H2 emission lines in active galaxies X-rays as dominant excitation mechanism of [Fe ii] and H2 emission lines in active galaxies

2012-01-19

arxiv.org/abs/1201.4046v1

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics

10 pages, 9 figures, accepted by MNRAS

Scientific paper

We investigate the excitation mechanisms of near-infrared [Fe ii] and H2 emission lines observed in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs). We built a photoionization model grid considering a two-component continuum, one accounts for the Big Bump component peaking at 1Ryd and another represents the X-ray source that dominates the continuum emission at high energies. Photoionization models considering as ionizing source a spectral energy distribution obtained from photometric data of the Sy 2 Mrk 1066 taken from the literature were considered. Results of these models were compared with a large sample of observational long-slit and Integral field Unit (IFU) spectroscopy data of the nuclear region for a sample of active objects. We found that the correlation between the observational [Fe ii]{\lambda}1.2570 {\mu}m/Pa{\beta} vs. H2{\lambda}2.1218 {\mu}m/Br{\gamma} is well reproduced by our models as well as the relationships that involve the H2 emission line ratios observed in the spectroscopic data.We conclude that the heating by X-rays produced by active nuclei can be considered a common and very important mechanism of excitation of [Fe ii] and H2.

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