BASS. XLVIII. [Ne V] λ3427 Emission in Powerful Nearby Active Galactic Nuclei

Abstract

We investigate the high-ionization, narrow [Ne V ] λ 3427 line emission in a sample of over 340 ultrahard X-ray (14–195 keV) selected active galactic nuclei (AGN) drawn from the BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey project. The analysis includes measurements in individual and stacked spectra and considers several key AGN properties such as X-ray luminosity, supermassive black hole (SMBH) mass, Eddington ratios, and line-of-sight column density. The [Ne V ] λ 3427 line is robustly detected in ≈43% (146/341) of the AGN in our sample, with no significant trends between the detection rate and key AGN/SMBH properties. In particular, the detection rate remains high even at the highest levels of obscuration (>70% for ${\mathrm{log}}\,\left[{N}_{{\rm{H}}}/{\mathrm{cm}}^{-2}\right])\gtrsim 23$ ). On the other hand, even some of our highest signal-to-noise spectra (S/N > 50) lack a robust [Ne v] detection. The typical (median) scaling ratios between [Ne v] line emission and (ultra)hard X-ray emission in our sample are ${\mathrm{log}}\,{L}_{[{\rm{Ne}}\,{\rm\small{V}}]}/{L}_{14-150\,{\rm{keV}}}\simeq -3.75$ and ${\mathrm{log}}\,{L}_{[{\rm{Ne}}\,{\rm\small{V}}]}/{L}_{2-10\,{\rm{keV}}}\simeq -3.36$ . The scatter on these scaling ratios, ≲0.5 dex, is comparable to, and indeed smaller than, what is found for other commonly used tracers of AGN radiative outputs (e.g., [O III ] λ 5007). Otherwise, we find no significant relations between the (relative) strength of [Ne v] and the basic AGN/SMBH properties under study, in contrast with simple expectations from models of SMBH accretion flows. Our results reaffirm the usability of [Ne v] as an AGN tracer even in highly obscured systems, including dual AGN and high-redshift sources.

Keywords

• Active galactic nuclei
• X-ray active galactic nuclei
• Galaxy nuclei
• High energy astrophysics