The role of nuclear activity as the power source of ultraluminous infrared galaxies

Abstract

We present the results of a 5-8 micron spectral analysis performed on the largest sample of local ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) selected so far, consisting of 164 objects up to a redshift of ~0.35. The unprecedented sensitivity of the Infrared Spectrograph onboard Spitzer allowed us to develop an effective diagnostic method to disentangle the active galactic nucleus (AGN) and starburst (SB) contribution to this class of objects. The intrinsic bolometric corrections are estimated for both the components, in order to obtain the relative AGN/SB contribution to the total luminosity of each source. Our main results are the following: 1) The AGN detection rate among local ULIRGs amounts up to 70 per cent, with 113/164 convincing detections within our sample, while the global AGN/SB power balance is ~1/3. 2) A general agreement is found with optical classification; however, among the objects with no spectral signatures of nuclear activity, our IR diagnostics find a subclass of elusive, highly obscured AGN. 3) We analyse the correlation between nuclear activity and IR luminosity, recovering the well-known trend of growing AGN significance as a function of the overall energy output of the system: the average AGN contribution rises from ~10 to ~60 per cent across the ULIRG luminosity range. 4) We confirm that the AGN content is larger in compact systems, but the link between activity and evolutionary stage is rather loose. 5) By analysing a control sample of IR-luminous galaxies around z ~ 1, we find evidence for only minor changes with redshift of the large-scale spectral properties of the AGN and SB components. This underlines the potential of our method as a straightforward and quantitative AGN/SB diagnostic tool for ULIRG-like systems at high redshift as well.