Discovering Dust-Obscured Active Galaxies as They Grow

How did galaxies form and evolve during the 13.8-billion-year history of the universe? This question has been the subject of intense observational and theoretical investigation. Recent studies have revealed that almost all massive galaxies harbor a supermassive black hole whose mass reaches up to a hundred thousand or even a billion times the mass of the sun, and their masses are tightly correlated with those of their host galaxies. This correlation suggests that supermassive black holes and their host galaxies have evolved together, closely interacting as they grow.

The number density of DOGs (Dust Obscured Galaxies) as a function of infrared luminosity. Data represented by the red star is the HSC result (Hyper Suprime-Cam, or HSC, is a new wide-field camera mounted at the prime focus of the Subaru Telescope). The research team found that (i) their infrared luminosity exceeds 10 trillion suns, and (ii) their number density is about 300 per cubic gigaparsecs (1 gigaparsec is about 3×10²⁵ meter)

The group of researchers, lead by Dr. Yoshiki Toba (Ehime University), focused on the Dust Obscured Galaxies (DOGs) as a key population to tackle the mystery of the co-evolution of galaxies and black holes. DOGs are very faint in visible light, because of the large quantity of obscuring dust, but are bright in the infrared. The brightest infrared DOGs in particular are expected to harbor the most actively growing black hole. In addition, most DOGs are seen in the epoch when the star formation activity of galaxies reached its peak, 8-10 billion years ago. Thus both DOGs and their black holes are rapidly growing, at an early phase of their co-evolution. However, since DOGs are rare and are hidden behind significant amount of dust, previous visible light surveys have found very few such objects.

Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) is a new instrument installed on the 8.2 meter Subaru Telescope in 2012. It is a wide-field camera with a field of view nine times the size of the full moon. An ambitious legacy survey with HSC started in March 2014 as a “Subaru strategic program”; total of 300 nights have been allocated for a five year period. The Subaru strategic program with HSC started to deliver large quantities of excellent imaging data.

The research team selected DOGs from early data from the HSC Subaru Strategic Program (SSP). DOGs are thousand times brighter in the infrared than the optical and the team selected their targets using the HSC and NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. They also utilized the data from the VISTA Kilo-degree Infrared Galaxy survey (VIKING). The all-sky survey data with WISE are crucial to discover spatially rare DOG while the VIKING data are useful to identify the DOGs more precisely.

Consequently, 48 DOGs were discovered. Each of these is 10 trillion times more luminous in the infrared than the sun. The number density of these luminous DOGs is about 300 per cubic gigaparsecs. It is theoretically predicted that these DOGs harbor an actively evolving supermassive black hole. This result provides researchers new insights into the mysteries of the co-evolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes from the unique observational prospects.

Images of 3 DOG’s. The left, middle, and right panels show optical image from HSC, near-infrared image from VIKING, and mid-infrared image from WISE, respectively. The image size is 20 square arcsecond (1 arcsecond is 1/3600 degree). It is clear that DOGs are faint in the optical, but are extremely bright in the infrared

In this research, the research team discovered 48 Dust Obscured Galaxies and revealed their statistical properties of infrared luminous DOGs in particular, for the first time.

Source: Subaru Telescope