Mid-infrared Variability of Changing-look AGNs

Sheng, Zhenfeng and Wang, Tinggui and Jiang, Ning and Yang, Chenwei and Yan, Lin and Dou, Liming and Peng, Bo (2017) Mid-infrared Variability of Changing-look AGNs. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 846 (1). Art. No. L7. ISSN 2041-8213. https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20170830-103324003

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Abstract

It is known that some active galactic nuclei (AGNs) transit from Type 1 to Type 2 or vice versa. There are two explanations for the so-called changing-look AGNs: one is the dramatic change of the obscuration along the line of sight, and the other is the variation of accretion rate. In this Letter, we report the detection of large amplitude variations in the mid-infrared luminosity during the transitions in 10 changing-look AGNs using the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and newly released Near-Earth Object WISE Reactivation data. The mid-infrared light curves of 10 objects echo the variability in the optical band with a time lag expected for dust reprocessing. The large variability amplitude is inconsistent with the scenario of varying obscuration, rather it supports the scheme of dramatic change in the accretion rate.

Item Type:

Article

Related URLs:

URL	URL Type	Description
https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/aa85de	DOI	Article
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/aa85de/meta	Publisher	Article
https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.02686	arXiv	Discussion Paper

ORCID:

Author	ORCID
Sheng, Zhenfeng	0000-0001-6938-8670
Wang, Tinggui	0000-0002-1517-6792
Jiang, Ning	0000-0002-7152-3621
Yang, Chenwei	0000-0003-4975-2433
Yan, Lin	0000-0003-1710-9339
Dou, Liming	0000-0002-4757-8622

Alternate Title:

Mid-infrared variability of changing-look AGN

Additional Information:

© 2017 The American Astronomical Society. Received 2017 May 23; revised 2017 July 10; accepted 2017 August 10; published 2017 August 29. We acknowledge the anonymous referee for valuable comments that helped to improve the Letter. And we acknowledge Andrew Drake for providing the unreleased CRTS data (Drake et al. 2009) of J155440. Also, we acknowledge Jordan N. Runco for helpful information on J081319 (Runco et al. 2016). We thank Luming Sun for discussion and Zhihao Zhong for his perfect spectrum reduction skill. This project is supported by National Basic Research Program of China (grant No. 2015CB857005), the NSFC through NSFC-11233002, NSFC-11421303, NSFC-116203021, and U1431229, jointly supported by the Chinese Academy of Science and NSF. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The CSS survey is funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under grant No. NNG05GF22G issued through the Science Mission Directorate Near-Earth Objects Observations Program. The CRTS survey is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under grant No. AST-0909182. This research made use of Astropy, a community-developed core Python package for Astronomy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013).

Group:

Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)

Funders:

Funding Agency	Grant Number
National Basic Research Program of China	2015CB857005
National Natural Science Foundation of China	11233002
National Natural Science Foundation of China	11421303
National Natural Science Foundation of China	116203021
National Natural Science Foundation of China	U1431229
Chinese Academy of Sciences	UNSPECIFIED
NASA/JPL/Caltech	UNSPECIFIED
NASA	NNG05GF22G
NSF	AST-0909182

Subject Keywords:

accretion, accretion disks – galaxies: active – galaxies: Seyfert – infrared: galaxies

Issue or Number:

Record Number:

CaltechAUTHORS:20170830-103324003

Persistent URL:

https://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechAUTHORS:20170830-103324003

Official Citation:

Zhenfeng Sheng et al 2017 ApJL 846 L7

Usage Policy:

No commercial reproduction, distribution, display or performance rights in this work are provided.

ID Code:

80953

Collection:

CaltechAUTHORS

Deposited By:

Tony Diaz

Deposited On:

30 Aug 2017 17:41

Last Modified:

09 Mar 2020 13:19

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