Abstract

The most heavily-obscured, luminous quasars might represent a specific phase of the evolution of the actively accreting supermassive black holes and their host galaxies, possibly related to mergers. We investigated a sample of the most luminous quasars at z ≈ 1 − 3 in the GOODS fields, selected in the mid-infrared band through detailed spectral energy distribution (SED) decomposition. The vast majority of these quasars (~80%) are obscured in the X-ray band and ~30% of them to such an extent, that they are undetected in some of the deepest (2 and 4 Ms) Chandra X-ray data. Although no clear relation is found between the star-formation rate of the host galaxies and the X-ray obscuration, we find a higher incidence of heavily-obscured quasars in disturbed/merging galaxies compared to the unobscured ones, thus possibly representing an earlier stage of evolution, after which the system is relaxing and becoming unobscured.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-12-2018

Notes/Citation Information

Published in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, v. 4, article 67, p. 1-5.

Copyright © 2018 Del Moro, Alexander, Bauer, Daddi, Kocevski, Stanley and McIntosh.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.3389/fspas.2017.00067

Funding Information

This research was supported by the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC, ST/L00075X/1); CONICYT-Chile (Basal-CATA PFB-06/2007, “EMBIGGEN” Anillo ACT1101, FONDECYT Regular 1141218); the Ministry of Economy, Development, and Tourism's Millennium Science Initiative through grant IC120009, awarded to The Millennium Institute of Astrophysics (MAS).

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