A technique to select the most obscured galaxy nuclei

Journal article, 2022

Compact obscured nuclei (CONs) are mainly found in local luminous and ultraluminous infrared galaxies (U/LIRGs). In the local Universe, these sources are generally selected through the detection of the HCN-vib (3-2) emission line at submillimetre wavelengths. In this work, we present a diagnostic method to select deeply buried nuclei based on mid-infrared (mid-IR) polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and mid-IR continuum ratios. Using Spitzer InfraRed Spectrograph (IRS) spectra of a representative sample of local ULIRGs (z < 0.27), we examine their PAH and underlying continuum emission ratios. For deeply embedded sources, we find that the 9.7 mu m silicate absorption band has a particularly pronounced effect on the 11.3 mu m PAH feature. The low flux level in the nuclear silicate absorption band enhances the 11.3 mu m PAH feature contrast (high PAH equivalent width) compared to that of the other PAH features. The technique has been extended to include the use of the underlying 11.3/12.7 and 11.3/6.2 mu m continuum ratios. However, the latter are affected by the extinction coming from both the host galaxy and the nuclear region, whereas the foreground (host-galaxy) extinction is cancelled out when using the PAH equivalent width ratios. We apply our method to local U/LIRGs from the HERUS and GOALS samples and classify 14 ULIRGs and 10 LIRGs as CON candidates, which corresponds to 30% of the ULIRGs and 7% of the LIRGs from these samples. We find that the observed continuum ratios of CON-dominated sources can be explained by assuming torus models with a tapered disc geometry and a smooth dust distribution. This suggests that the nuclear dusty structure of deeply obscured galaxy nuclei has an extremely high dust coverage. Finally, we demonstrate that the use of mid-IR colour-colour diagrams is an e ffective way to select CON-dominated sources at different redshifts. In particular, the combination of filters of the James Webb Space Telescope/Mid-Infrared Instrument will enable the selection of CONs out to z similar to 1.5. This will allow the selection of CONs to be extended to high redshifts where U/LIRGs are more numerous.