We present results of our analysis of NuSTAR data of the luminous infrared galaxy Mrk 266, which contains two nuclei, SW and NE, resolved in previous Chandra imaging. Combining with the Chandra data, we intepret the hard X-ray spectrum obtained from a NuSTAR observation as resulting from steeply rising flux from a Compton-thick AGN in the SW nucleus which is very faint in the Chandra band, confirming the previous claim of Mazzarella et al. (2012). This hard X-ray component is dominated by reflection, and its intrinsic 2-10 keV luminosity is likely to be ~1e43 erg/s. Although it is bright in soft X-ray, only moderately absorbed NE nucleus has a 2-10 keV luminosity of 4e41 erg/s, placing it in the low-luminosity AGN class. These results have implications for understanding the detectability and duty cycles of emission from dual AGN in heavily obscured mergers.
@article{arxiv.2007.03258,
title = {A Compton-thick nucleus in the dual AGN of Mrk 266},
author = {K. Iwasawa and C. Ricci and G. C. Privon and N. Torres-Albà and H. Inami and V. Charmandaris and A. S. Evans and J. M. Mazzarella and T. Díaz-Santos},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.03258},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics. 7 pages, 5 figures. Language corrections and a minor correction in Fig. 5 included