19 95Apjs. . .98. .171V the Astrophysical Journal Supplement
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The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, 98:171-217,1995 May .171V © 1995. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A. .98. 95ApJS. OPTICAL SPECTROSCOPY OF LUMINOUS INFRARED GALAXIES. 19 II. ANALYSIS OF THE NUCLEAR AND LONG-SLIT DATA S. Veilleux, ‘’2'3 D.-C. Kim,4 D. B. Sanders,4 J. M. Mazzarella,5 and B. T. Soifer6 Received 1994 April 14; accepted 1994 December 2 ABSTRACT 7 10 1 A spectroscopic survey of a sample of 200 luminous IRAS galaxies (LIGs: Lir > 3 X 10 L0; H0 = 75 km s“ Mpc-1 ) was carried out using the Palomar 5 meter and University of Hawaii 2.2 m telescopes. Kim et al. ( 1995 ) described the data-taking and data-reduction procedures and presented line and continuum measurements ex- tracted from the nucleus of these objects. In this paper, the nuclear data are combined with circumnuclear mea- surements on 23 of these galaxies to investigate the properties of the line-emitting gas and underlying stellar population in and out of the nucleus. The nuclear spectra of these galaxies were classified as “H n region-like” or “AGN-like” using a large number of line-ratio diagnostics corrected for the underlying stellar absorption features. This correction is an important source of errors in some previous studies. The emission-line spectra of many AGNs were found to be of relatively low ionization level and were therefore classified as LINER. We confirm that both the fraction of LIGs with AGN spectra and the fraction of Seyferts among the AGN increase with infrared luminosity, reaching values of 62% and 54% at the highest observed luminosities, respectively. The fraction of LINERs, on the other hand, is relatively constant at ~27%. The source of the ionization of the emission-line gas often is a function of the distance from the nucleus. Based on the emission-line ratios and the strengths of the stellar absorption features, circumnuclear starburst activity is a common feature of LIGs, regardless of their nuclear spectral types. The emission-line, absorption-line, continuum, radio, and IRAS properties of the LINERs suggest that most of the LINER emission in these infrared-selected galaxies is produced through shock ionization rather than photoionization by a genuine active nucleus. The nuclear region of Seyfert LIGs is found to be slightly less reddened than that of the LINERs and H n galaxies. The dust distribution generally is concentrated toward the nucleus, in agreement with the often peaky distribution of the molecular gas observed in these galaxies. Inverted dust profiles in which the nucleus appears less dusty than the circumnuclear region are observed in only three LIGs, all of which have AGN emission-line characteristics (one Seyfert 2 galaxy and two LINERs). Low nuclear dust content appears to favor the detection of active nuclei. This may be due to selection effects or may reflect real physical differences between these classes of objects: galaxies with Seyfert emission lines may be at a more advanced stage of dust destruction/expulsion than H ii LIGs. Complex optical depth effects may also explain these results without invoking a smaller amount of dust in the nucleus. The Hß and Mg I b absorption features are stronger in the nuclei of AGNs (especially among the LINERs) than in H ii LIGs, suggesting that AGN LIGs are at a more advanced stage of stellar evolution than HII LIGs. Further support for this scenario comes from the fact that AGNs are found more frequently in advanced mergers than H ii galaxies (only two Seyfert galaxies are detected in systems with well-separated nuclei). However, this last result may be a luminosity effect rather than an effect related to the dominant nuclear source of ionization. Moreover, the absorption-line data may simply reflect the fact that galaxies with powerful H ii regions show evidence for young stars while galaxies with AGNs do not. The radial variations of the Hß and Mg i b absorption features indicate the presence of a strong source of featureless continuum in the nucleus of nearly all LIGs, regardless of their nuclear spectral types. Contamination by the circumnuclear starburst prevents us from deter- mining the extent of this continuum source. The [O in] profiles of both Seyfert and LINER LIGs were found to be broader on average than those of H n objects. Nearly 20% of the LIGs in our sample have line widths larger than 600 km s-1. We find that most of the galaxies in which we could determine the radial variations of the [O m] line width present broader profiles in the circumnuclear region than at the nucleus. When combined with published data on a few other well-studied LIGs, these results suggest that large-scale nuclear winds are common in these objects and are an efficient way of getting rid of the obscuring material in the nuclear region. The spatially extended LINER emission observed in many of 1 Kitt Peak National Observatory, NOAO, P.O. Box 26732, Tucson, AZ 5 Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, MS 100-12, California Insti- 85726-6732. tute of Technology, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA 91125. 2 Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, 6 Palomar Observatory, California Institute of Technology, 320-47, Pas- MD 20742. adena, CA 91125. 3 Hubble Fellow. 7 Lir = L (8-1000 ^m). 4 Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822. 171 © American Astronomical Society • Provided by the NASA Astrophysics Data System .171V 172 VEILLEUX ET AL. Vol. 98 these objects is probably due to shock ionization resulting from the interaction of the wind-accelerated gas with .98. the ambient material of the host galaxy. Subject headings: galaxies: active — galaxies: nuclei — galaxies: stellar content — H n regions—infrared: galaxies 95ApJS. 19 1. INTRODUCTION 1991). Optical studies infer the nature of the energy source by Surveys with the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) assuming that the physical characteristics of the circumnuclear have revealed that a significant fraction of extragalactic objects gas and underlying stellar population are good probes of the emit the bulk of their radiation at far-infrared wavelengths central energy source. This is also the approach that we will (e.g., Soifer et al. 1984a,b, 1986; Rieke & Lebofsky 1986). In follow in the present study. The weaknesses of this assumption fact, above log (L/L©) ^ 11.5, this class of galaxies becomes will be reviewed in the discussion of our results ( § 4 ). the dominant extragalactic population in the local universe, A major limitation of previous optical studies of LIGs has exceeding even the space densities of optically selected quasars been the small size of their samples or the limited number of at comparable bolometric luminosity (Soifer et al. 1987; Sand- line and continuum diagnostics used in their analysis. In an ers et al. 1989 ). The pioneering work by Rieke & Low (1972) attempt to remedy this situation we have carried out a spectro- originally suggested that far-infrared emission may not only be scopic survey of a large sample of IRAS galaxies. Long-slit Pal- omar 5 meter spectra covering at least 3750-8000 Á a dominant feature of the spectral energy distribution (SED) of a wide variety of extragalactic objects, but also that the ob- ( sometimes up to ~ 1 /mi) at a resolution of 8-10 A and MKO 2.2 m spectra covering 5850-8870 À were obtained of 200 served infrared luminosity may be causally connected to the radio emission in the nuclei of Seyfert and related galaxies. IRAS galaxies, including 114 objects from the IRAS Bright Coupled with more recent observations that suggest a strong Galaxy Survey (BGS; Soifer et al. 1989; Sanders et al. correlation between galaxy interaction and high infrared lumi- 1995a,b), hereafter referred to the BGSs (see Kim et al. 1995, hereafter Paper I ) and 86 objects from the IRAS Warm Galaxy nosity (e.g., Lonsdale, Persson, & Matthews, 1984; Joseph & Wright 1985; Cutri & McAlary 1985; Sanders et al. 1987), Survey ( WGS) selected on the basis of their “warm” infrared ( 60 ¡im/100 fim) colors, hereafter referred to as the WGSs ( see these results suggest that detailed studies of luminous infrared _1 Paper I). A constant linear aperture of 2 kpc (H0 = 15 km s galaxies (LIGs) may provide important clues to the origin of -1 nuclear activity in galaxies, and to the role of galaxy interac- Mpc and q0 = 0.5) was used to extract the nuclear spectra tions in triggering this activity. from these data and therefore minimize aperture-related Perhaps the most important question regarding LIGs is the effects. An atlas of the nuclear spectra was presented in Paper I nature of their energy source. The debate often centers on what along with tabulations of some of the results derived from these powers the most luminous infrared galaxies (L ^ 1011 L©) nuclear data. The present paper reports the results of our anal- since the far-infrared flux in most of the weaker sources proba- ysis of these nuclear data ( § 2 ) and also provides new informa- bly comes from dust heated by the old stellar population or as tion about the spatial variations of the various spectral param- a consequence of star formation (e.g., Allen, Roche, & Norris eters in 23 objects of the sample (§ 3). In § 4, we discuss the 1985; Elston, Cornell, & Lebofsky 1985; Lawrence et al. 1985; implications of this analysis, addressing the nature of the en- Leech et al. 1989; Thronson et al. 1990). Scenarios involving ergy sources in luminous infrared galaxies and describing pos- intense star formation (Norman & Scoville 1988; Rieke 1988; sible scenarios to explain the data.