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October 19, 20250 citationsOpen Access

Nuclear Spectral Energy Distributions of Luminous Infrared Galaxies

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TGTianmu GaoUVU VivianCAConnor Auge

Key Points

  • Higher AGN fraction is found in late and post-merger stages compared to early-stage mergers, suggesting enhanced activity.
  • The study examines the SEDs of 28 nuclei in 23 luminous infrared galaxies, focusing on their infrared and X-ray emissions.
  • Data modeling is performed using X-CIGALE, which helps analyze the spectral energy distributions from X-ray to submillimeter.
  • Nuclear regions exhibit greater X-ray hardness ratios than their host galaxies, indicating differences in emission sources.

Abstract

We present nuclear (100-150 pc) spectral energy distributions (SEDs) for a sample of 23 nearby luminous infrared galaxies hosting a total of 28 nuclei. We gather aperture photometry from high-resolution X-ray to submillimeter data for each nuclear region localized by ALMA observations of the dust continuum. We model the broadband SEDs using X-CIGALE. Binning the merging systems by interaction class, we find that the AGN fraction (fraction of AGN infrared luminosity to total infrared luminosity) appears enhanced in the late- and post-merger stages compared to early-stage mergers. Examining the relationship between X-ray emission and infrared emission of the nuclear regions, we find that the infrared emission in the nucleus is dominated by dust and AGN, with minimal contribution from stars. We also find that nuclear regions have higher X-ray hardness ratios than the host galaxies globally among both the AGN and non-AGN population. We highlight the similarities and differences in the SEDs of dual nuclei in five closely separated late-stage merging systems: Arp 220 (dₙuc 0. 5 kpc), NGC 6240 (dₙuc 1 kpc), IRAS 07251-0248 (dₙuc 2 kpc), IRAS F12112+0305 (dₙuc 4 kpc), and IRAS F14348+1447 (dₙuc 6 kpc). The SEDs for these resolved pairs are distinct, suggesting that the AGN state is much more susceptible to the stellar and dust content within the immediate circumnuclear (<150 pc) environment than to the host's global infrared luminosity or merger stage.

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Cite This Study

Gao et al. (2025) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/68f43f09854d1061a58aca28https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2504.16971
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