Infrared colours and spectral energy distributions of hard X-ray selected obscured and Compton-thick active galactic nuclei

Abstract

ABSTRACT We investigate the infrared colours and spectral energy distributions (SEDs) of 338 X-ray selected active galactic nuclei (AGNs) from the Swift/Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) 105-month survey catalogue, which have been detected using AKARI, in order to find new selection criteria for Compton-thick AGNs. By combining data from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 14 (DR14), the Two-Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), AKARI and Herschel for the first time, we perform ultraviolet (UV) to far-infrared (FIR) SEDs, fitting 158 Swift/BAT AGNs using cigale and constraining the AGN model parameters of obscured and Compton-thick AGNs. The comparison of average SEDs shows that while the mid-infrared (MIR) SEDs are similar for the three AGN populations, the optical/UV and FIR regions have differences. We measure the dust luminosity, the pure AGN luminosity and the total infrared luminosity. We examine the relationships between the measured infrared luminosities and the hard X-ray luminosity in the 14–195 keV band. We show that the average covering factor of Compton-thick AGNs is higher compared with the obscured and unobscured AGNs. We present new infrared selection criteria for Compton-thick AGNs based on MIR and FIR colours ([9–22 μm] > 3.0 and [22–90 μm] < 2.7) from WISE and AKARI. We find two known Compton-thick AGNs that are not included in the Swift/BAT sample. We conclude that MIR colours covering 9.7-μm silicate absorption and the MIR continuum could be promising new tools to identify Compton-thick AGNs.