Far-infrared dust properties of highly dust-obscured active galactic nuclei from the AKARI and WISE all-sky surveys

Abstract

The combination of the AKARI and WISE infrared all-sky surveys provides a unique opportunity to identify and characterize the most highly dust-obscured active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in the universe. Dust-obscured AGNs are not easily detectable and are potentially underrepresented in extragalactic surveys due to their high optical extinction, but are readily found in the WISE catalog due to their extremely red mid-infrared (IR) colors. Combining these surveys with photometry from Pan-STARRS and Herschel, we use spectral energy distribution (SED) modeling to characterize the extinction and dust properties of these AGNs. From mid-IR WISE colors we are able to compute bolometric corrections to AGN luminosities. Using AKARI's far-IR wavelength photometry and broadband AGN/galaxy spectral templates we estimate AGN dust mass and temperature using simple analytic models with three or four parameters. Even without spectroscopic data we can determine a number of AGN dust properties only using SED analysis. These methods, combined with the abundance of archival photometric data publicly available, will be valuable for large-scale studies of dusty, IR-luminous AGNs.