English

A possible binary AGN in Mrk\,622?

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2017-12-27 v1

Abstract

Mrk\,622 is a Compton Thick AGN and a double-peaked narrow emission line galaxy, thus a dual AGN candidate. In this work, new optical long-slit spectroscopic observations clearly show that this object is rather a triple peaked narrow emission line galaxy, with both blue and red shifted narrow emission lines, as well as a much narrower emission line centred at the host galaxy systemic velocity. The average velocity offset between the blue and red shifted components is \sim500 km\,s1^{-1}, which is producing the apparent double-peaked emission lines. These two components are in the loci of AGN in the Baldwin, Phillips \& Terlevich (BPT) diagrams and are found to be spatially separated by \sim76 pc. Analysis of the optical spatially resolved spectroscopic observations presented in this work favours that Mrk\,622 is a system consisting of a Composite AGN amidst a binary AGN candidate, likely the result of a recent merger. This notwithstanding, outflows from a starburst, or single AGN could also explain the triple nature of the emission lines.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1711.06655,
  title  = {A possible binary AGN in Mrk\,622?},
  author = {E. Benítez and J. M. Rodríguez-Espinosa and I. Cruz-González and O. González-Martín and C. A. Negrete and D. Ruschel-Dutra and L. Gutiérrez and E. Jiménez-Bailón},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1711.06655},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

5 pages, 3 figures, 3 tables. Accepted in MNRAS Letters. 5 pages, 3 tables, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T22:49:41.882Z