Comparison of SEDs of very massive radio-loud and radio-quiet AGN

Abstract

ABSTRACT The main objective of this work is to establish and interpret the dominant spectral components and their differences in radio-loud (RL) and radio-quiet (RQ) AGN with very massive black holes, and accreting at moderate rates. Such a sample is selected from the Swift/BAT catalogue of AGN having determined optical spectra types and hosting black holes with masses $\rm \gt 10^{8.5}\, M_{\odot }$. We confirm our previous results, that radio loudness distribution of Swift/BAT AGN is bimodal and that radio galaxies are about two times X-ray louder than their RQ counterparts. We show that the average X-ray loudness (defined as a ratio of luminosity in the 14–195 keV band to that at 12 μm) of Type 1 and Type 2 AGN is very similar. This similarity holds for both RL and RQ subsamples and indicates negligible dependence of the observed X-ray luminosities on the inclination angle in both populations. In both the radiative output is dominated by mid-IR and hard X-ray components, and relatively weak UV luminosities indicate large amounts of dust in polar regions.