Modeling the Strongest Silicate Emission Features of Local Type 1 AGNs

¹M. Martínez-Paredes,²O. González-Martín,²D. Esparza-Arredondo,¹M. Kim,³A. Alonso-Herrero,⁴Y. Krongold,¹T. Hoang,^5,6C. Ramos Almeida,⁷I. Aretxaga,⁴D. Dultzin,¹J. Hodgson
The Astrophysical Journal 890, 152 Link to Article [DOI
https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ab6732]
¹Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute 776, Daedeokdae-ro, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon, Republic of Korea (34055
²Instituto de Radioastronomía y Astrofísica UNAM Apartado Postal 3-72 (Xangari), 58089 Morelia, Michoacán, Mexico
³Centro de Astrobiología, CSIC-INTA, ESAC Campus, E-28692 Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain
⁴Instituto de Astronomía UNAM, México, CDMX., C.P. 04510, Mexico
⁵Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), E-38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
⁶Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna (ULL), E-38206 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
⁷Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE), Luis Enrrique Erro 1, Sta. Ma. Tonantzintla, Puebla, Mexico

We measure the 10 and 18 μm silicate features in a sample of 67 local (z < 0.1) type 1 active galactic nuclei (AGN) with available Spitzer spectra dominated by nonstellar processes. We find that the 10 μm silicate feature peaks at ${10.3}_{-0.9}^{+0.7}\,\mu {\rm{m}}$ with a strength (Si_p = ln f_p(spectrum)/f_p(continuum)) of ${0.11}_{-0.36}^{+0.15}$ , while the 18 μm one peaks at ${17.3}_{-0.7}^{+0.4}\,\mu {\rm{m}}$ with a strength of ${0.14}_{-0.06}^{+0.06}$ . We select from this sample sources with the strongest 10 μm silicate strength ( ${\sigma }_{{\mathrm{Si}}_{10\mu {\rm{m}}}}\gt 0.28$ , 10 objects). We carry out a detailed modeling of the infrared spectrometer/Spitzer spectra by comparing several models that assume different geometries and dust composition: a smooth torus model, two clumpy torus models, a two-phase medium torus model, and a disk+outflow clumpy model. We find that the silicate features are well modeled by the clumpy model of Nenkova et al., and among all models, those including outflows and complex dust composition are the best. We note that even in AGN-dominated galaxies, it is usually necessary to add stellar contributions to reproduce the emission at the shortest wavelengths.