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# Chandra Snapshot Observations of Low-Luminosity AGNs with a Compact Radio Source

## 1 Introduction

Low-Ionization nuclear emission-line regions (LINERs; Heckman 1980) are found in many nearby bright galaxies (e.g., Ho, Filippenko, & Sargent 1997a). Extensive studies at various wavelengths have shown that type 1 LINERs (LINER 1s, i.e., those galaxies having broad H$`\alpha `$ and possibly other broad Balmer lines in their nuclear optical spectra) are powered by a low-luminosity AGN (LLAGN) with a bolometric luminosity less than $`10^{42}`$ ergs s-1 (Ho et al. 2001; Terashima, Ho, & Ptak 2000a; Ho et al. 1997b). On the other hand, the energy source of LINER 2s is likely to be heterogeneous. Some LINER 2s show clear signatures of the presence of an AGN, while others are most probably powered by stellar processes, and the luminosity ratio $`L_\mathrm{X}`$/$`L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }`$ can be used to discriminate between these different power sources (e.g., Pérez-Olea & Colina 1996; Maoz et al. 1998; Terashima et al. 2000b). It is interesting to note that currently there are only a few LINER 2s known to host an obscured AGN (e.g., Turner et al. 2001). This paucity of obscured AGN in LINERs may indicate that LINER 2s are not simply a low-luminosity extension of luminous Seyfert 2s, which generally show heavy obscuration with a column density averaging $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ $``$ $`10^{23}`$ cm-2 (e.g., Turner et al. 1997). Alternatively, biases against finding heavily obscured LLAGNs may be important. For example, objects selected through optical emission lines or X-ray fluxes are probably biased in favor of less absorbed ones, even if one uses the X-ray band above 2 keV.

In contrast, radio observations, particularly at high frequency, are much less affected by absorption. Although an optical spectroscopic survey must first be done to find the emission lines characteristic of a LLAGN, follow up radio observations can clarify the nature of the activity. For example, VLBI observations of some LLAGNs have revealed a compact nuclear radio source with $`T_\mathrm{b}>10^8`$ K, which is an unambiguous indicator of the presence of an active nucleus and cannot be produced by starburst activity (e.g., Falcke et al. 2000; Ulvestad & Ho 2001). A number of surveys of Seyfert galaxies at sub arcsecond resolution have been made with the VLA (Ulvestad & Wilson 1989 and references therein; Kukula et al. 1995; Nagar et al. 1999; Thean et al. 2000; Schmitt et al. 2001; Ho & Ulvestad 2001) and other interferometers (Roy et al. 1994; Morganti et al. 1999), but much less work has been done on the nuclear radio emission of LINERs. Nagar et al. (2002) have reported a VLA 2 cm radio survey of all 96 LLAGNs within a distance of 19 Mpc. These LLAGNs come from the Palomar spectroscopic survey of bright galaxies (Ho et al. 1997a). As a pilot study of the X-ray properties of LLAGNs, we report here a Chandra survey of a subset, comprising 15 galaxies, of Nagar et al’s (2002) sample. Fourteen of these galaxies have a compact nuclear radio core with a flat or inverted radio spectrum (Nagar et al. 2000). We have detected 13 of the galactic nuclei with Chandra. We also examine the “radio loudness” of our sample and compare it with other classes of AGN. A new measure of “radio loudness” is developed, in which the 5 GHz radio luminosity is compared with the 2–10 keV X-ray luminosity ($`R_\mathrm{X}`$=$`\nu L_\nu `$ (5 GHz)/$`L`$(2–10 keV)) rather than with the B-band optical luminosity ($`R_\mathrm{O}=L_\nu `$(5 GHz)/$`L_\nu `$(B)), as is usually done. $`R_\mathrm{X}`$ has the advantage that it can be measured for highly absorbed nuclei ($`N_\mathrm{H}`$ up to several times $`10^{23}`$ cm-2) which would be totally obscured ($`A_\mathrm{V}`$ up to a few hundred mag for the Galactic gas to dust ratio) at optical wavelengths, and that the compact, hard X-ray source in a LLAGN is less likely to be confused with emission from stellar-powered processes than is an optical nucleus.

This paper is organized as follows. The sample, observations, and data reduction are described in section 2. Imaging results and X-ray source detections are given in section 3. Section 4 presents spectral results. The power source, obscuration in LLAGNs, and radio loudness of LLAGNs are discussed in section 5. Section 6 summarizes the findings. We use a Hubble constant of $`H_0=75`$ km s-1 Mpc-1 and a deceleration parameter of $`q_0=0.5`$ throughout this paper.

## 2 The Sample, Observations, and Data Reduction

Our sample is based on the VLA observations by Nagar et al. (2000). Their sample of 48 objects consists of 22 LINERs, 18 transition objects, which show optical spectra intermediate between LINERs and H II nuclei, and eight low-luminosity Seyferts selected from the optical spectroscopic survey of Ho et al. (1997a). The sample is the first half of a distance-limited sample of LLAGNs (Nagar et al. 2002), as described in section 1.

We selected 14 objects showing a flat to inverted spectrum radio core ($`\alpha 0.3`$, $`S_\nu \nu ^\alpha `$) according to Nagar et al.’s (2000) comparison with longer wavelength radio data published in the literature. One object (the LINER 2 NGC 4550) has a flat spectrum radio source at a position significantly offset from the optical nucleus. This object was added as an example of a LINER without a detected radio core. The target list and some basic data for the final sample are summarized in Table 1. The distances are taken from Tully (1988) in which $`H_0=75`$ km s-1 Mpc-1 is assumed. The sample consists of seven LINER 1s, four LINER 2s, two Seyfert 1s, one Seyfert 2, and one transition 2 object. 12 out of these 15 objects have been observed with the VLBA and high brightness temperature ($`T_\mathrm{b}>10^7`$ K) radio cores were detected in all of them (Falcke et al. 2000; Ulvestad & Ho 2001; Nagar et al. 2002). Therefore, these objects are strong candidates for AGNs. Results of archival / scheduled Chandra observations of more LINERs with a compact flat/inverted spectrum radio core found by Nagar et al. (2002) will be presented in a future paper.

A log of Chandra observations is shown in Table 1. The exposure time was typically two ksec each. All the objects were observed at or near the aim point of the ACIS-S3 back-illuminated CCD chip. Eight objects were observed in our Guaranteed Time Observation program and the rest of the objects were taken from the Chandra archives. The eight objects were observed in 1/8 sub-frame mode (frame time 0.4 s) to minimize effects of pileup (e.g., Davis 2001). 1/2 sub-frame modes were used for three objects. CIAO 2.2.1 and CALDB 2.7 were used to reduce the data. In the following analysis, only events with ASCA grades 0, 2, 3, 4, 6 (“good grades”) were used. For spectral fitting, XSPEC version 11.2.0 was employed.

## 3 X-ray Images and Source Detection

### 3.1 Source Detection

An X-ray nucleus is seen in all the galaxies except for NGC 4550 and NGC 5866. Some off-nuclear sources are also seen in some fields. The source detection algorithm “wavdetect” in the CIAO package was applied to detect these nuclear and off-nuclear sources, where a detection threshold of $`10^6`$ and wavelet scales of 1, $`\sqrt{2}`$, 2, $`2\sqrt{2}`$, 4, $`4\sqrt{2}`$, 8, $`8\sqrt{2}`$, and 16 pixels were used. Source detections were performed in the three energy bands 0.5–8 keV (full band), 0.5–2 keV (soft band), and 2–8 keV (hard band). The resulting source lists and raw images were examined by eye to exclude spurious detections. The source and background counts were also determined by manual photometry and compared with the results of wavdetect. In the few cases that the two methods gave discrepant results, we decided to use the results of the manual photometry after inspection of the raw images. Some sources were detected in only one or two energy bands. In such cases, we calculated the upper limits on the source counts in the undetected band(s) at the 95% confidence level by interpolating the values in Table 2 of Kraft, Burrows, & Nousek (1991).

Table 2 shows the positions, detected counts, band ratios (hard/soft counts), fluxes and luminosities in the 2–10 keV band of the nuclear sources. The same parameters for off-nuclear sources with signal-to-noise ratios greater than three are summarized in Table 3. For bright objects ($`>`$ 40 counts), the fluxes were measured by spectral fits presented in the next section. For faint objects, fluxes were determined by assuming the Galactic absorption column density and power law spectra, with photon indices determined from the band ratios. When only lower or upper limits on the band ratio were available, a photon index of 2 was assumed if the limit is consistent with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2`$. When the band ratio is inconsistent with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2`$, the upper or lower limit is used to determine the photon index. Luminosities were calculated only if the source is spatially inside the optical host galaxy as indicated by comparing the position with the optical image of the Digitized Sky Survey. Possible identifications for off-nuclear sources are also given in the last column of Table 3.

The positions of the X-ray nuclei coincide with the radio core positions to within the positional accuracy of Chandra. The nominal separations between the X-ray and radio nuclei are in the range 0.05 – 0.95′′.

### 3.2 X-ray Morphology of the Nuclear Region

Inspection of the images shows that the nucleus in most objects appears to be unresolved, while some objects show faint extended emission. The soft and hard band images of the nuclear regions of NGC 3169 and NGC 4278 are shown in Fig 1 as examples of extended emission. In the soft band image of NGC 3169, emission in the nuclear region extending $`10`$ arcsec in diameter is clearly visible, while the nucleus itself is not detected (Table 2). About 25 counts were detected within a 10 pixel (4.9 arcsec) radius in the $`0.52`$ keV band. This extended emission is not seen in the hard band. The soft band image of NGC 4278 consists of a bright nucleus and a faint elongated feature with a length of $`50^{\prime \prime }`$ and a position angle of $`70^{}`$. The hard band image is unresolved.

The nuclear regions (10 arcsec scale) of the other galaxies look compact to within the current photon statistics. More extended diffuse emission at larger scales ($`>0.5^{}`$) is seen in a few objects. The nuclei of NGC 2787 and NGC 4203 are embedded in soft diffuse emission with diameters of $`30^{\prime \prime }`$ and $`50^{\prime \prime }`$, respectively. NGC 4579 shows soft diffuse emission with a similar morphology to the circumnuclear star forming ring, in addition to a very bright nucleus (see also Eracleous et al. 2002). NGC 4565 shows extended emission along the galactic plane. NGC 5866 has soft extended emission $`0.5^{}`$ (2 kpc) in diameter and no X-ray nucleus is detected (Table 2). Any diffuse emission associated with the other galaxies is much fainter.

## 4 X-ray Spectra

Spectral fits were performed for the relatively bright objects — those with $`>`$ 40 detected counts in the 0.5–8 keV band. The spectrum of one fainter object (NGC 4548) showing a large (=hard) hardness ratio was also fitted. Some objects are so bright that pileup effects are significant. Column 7 of Table 1 gives the count rates per CCD read-out frame time and can be used to estimate the significance of pileup. In the two objects NGC 3147 and NGC 4278, the pileup is mild and we corrected for the effect by applying the pileup model implemented in XSPEC, where the grade morphing parameter $`\alpha `$ was fixed at 0.5 (after initially treating it as a free parameter \[Davis 2001\] since $`\alpha `$ is not well constrained). The pileup effect for the three objects with the largest count rate per frame (NGC 4203, NGC 4579, and NGC 5033) is serious and we did not attempt detailed spectral fits. Instead, we use the spectra and fluxes measured with ASCA for these three objects (Terashima et al. 2002b and references therein) in the following discussions. We confirmed that the nuclear X-ray source dominates the hard X-ray emission within the beam size of ASCA (see Appendix). The other objects in the sample are faint enough to ignore the effects of pileup.

X-ray spectra were extracted from a circular region with a radius between 4 pixels (2.0′′; for faint sources) and 10 pixels (4.9′′; for bright sources) depending on source brightness. Background was estimated using an annular region centered on the target. A maximum-likelihood method using the C-statistic (Cash 1979) was employed in the spectral fits. In the fit with the C-statistic, background cannot be subtracted, so we added a background model (measured from the background region)

with fixed parameters to the spectral models, after normalizing by the ratio of the geometrical areas of the source and background regions. The errors quoted represent the 90% confidence level for one parameter of interest ($`\mathrm{\Delta }\chi ^2`$=2.7).

A power-law model modified by absorption was applied and acceptable fits were obtained in all cases (Fig. 2). The best-fit parameters for the nuclear sources are given in Table 4. The observed fluxes and luminosities (the latter corrected for absorption) in the 2–10 keV band are shown in Table 2. The results for a few bright off-nuclear sources are presented in the Appendix. The photon indices of the nuclear sources are generally consistent with the typical values observed in LLAGNs (photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.62.0`$, e.g., Terashima et al. 2002a, 2002b), although errors are quite large due to the limited photon statistics. The spectral slope of NGC 6500 ($`\mathrm{\Gamma }=3.1_{1.7}^{+1.1}`$) is somewhat steeper than is typical of LLAGNs. This may indicate that there is soft X-ray emission from a source other than the AGN and/or the intrinsic slope of the AGN is steep. One galaxy (NGC 3169, a LINER 2) has a large absorption column ($`N_\mathrm{H}`$=$`1.1\times 10^{23}`$ cm-2), while two galaxies (NGC 4548, a LINER 2, and NGC 3226, a LINER 1.9) show substantial absorption ( $`1.6\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2, and $`0.9\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2, respectively). Others have small column densities which are consistent with ‘type 1’ AGNs. No meaningful limit on the equivalent width of an Fe K$`\alpha `$ line was obtained for any of the objects because of limited photon statistics in the hard X-ray band.

One object — NGC 2787 — has only 8 detected photons in the 0.5–8 keV band and is too faint to obtain spectral information. A photon index of 2.0 and the Galactic absorption of $`4.3\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2 were assumed to calculate the flux and luminosity which are shown in Table 2.

## 5 Discussion

### 5.1 Power Source of LINERs

An X-ray nucleus is detected in all the objects except for NGC 4550 and NGC 5866. We test whether the detected X-ray sources are the high energy extension of the continuum source which powers the optical emission lines by examining the luminosity ratio $`L_\mathrm{X}`$/$`L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }`$. The H$`\alpha `$ luminosities ($`L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }`$) were taken from Ho et al. (1997a) and the reddening was estimated from the Balmer decrement for narrow lines and corrected using the reddening curve of Cardelli, Clayton, & Mathis (1989), assuming the intrinsic H$`\alpha `$/H$`\beta `$ flux ratio = 3.1. The X-ray luminosities (corrected for absorption) in the $`210`$ keV band are used.

The H$`\alpha `$ luminosities and logarithm of the luminosity ratios $`L_\mathrm{X}`$/$`L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }`$ are shown in Table 5. The $`L_\mathrm{X}`$/$`L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }`$ ratios of most objects are in the range of AGNs ($`\mathrm{log}`$ $`L_\mathrm{X}`$/$`L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }`$ $``$ 1–2) and in good agreement with the strong correlation between $`L_\mathrm{X}`$ and $`L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }`$ for LLAGNs, luminous Seyferts, and quasars presented in Terashima et al. (2000a) and Ho et al. (2001). This indicates that their optical emission lines are predominantly powered by a LLAGN. Note that this correlation is not an artifact of distance effects, as shown in Terashima et al. (2000a).

The four objects NGC 2787, NGC 4550, NGC 5866, and NGC 6500, however, have much lower $`L_\mathrm{X}`$/$`L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }`$ ratios ($`\mathrm{log}`$ $`L_\mathrm{X}`$/$`L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }`$ $`\stackrel{<}{}`$0) than expected from the correlation ($`\mathrm{log}`$ $`L_\mathrm{X}`$/$`L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }`$ $`12`$), and their X-ray luminosities are insufficient to power the H$`\alpha `$ emission (Terashima et al. 2000a). This X-ray faintness could indicate one or more of several possibilities such as (1) an AGN is the power source, but is heavily absorbed at energies above 2 keV, (2) an AGN is the power source, but is currently switched-off or in a faint state, and (3) the optical narrow emission lines are powered by some source(s) other than an AGN. We briefly discuss these three possibilities in turn.

If an AGN is present in these X-ray faint objects and absorbed in the hard energy band above 2 keV, only scattered and/or highly absorbed X-rays would be observed, and then the intrinsic luminosity would be much higher than that observed. This can account for the low $`L_\mathrm{X}`$/$`L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }`$ ratios and high radio to X-ray luminosity ratios ($`\nu L_\nu `$(5 GHz)/$`L_\mathrm{X}`$; Table 5 and section 5.3). If the intrinsic X-ray luminosities are about one or two orders of magnitude higher than those observed, as is often inferred for Seyfert 2 galaxies (Turner et al. 1997, Awaki et al. 2000), $`L_\mathrm{X}`$/$`L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }`$ and $`\nu L_\nu `$(5 GHz)/$`L_\mathrm{X}`$ become typical of LLAGNs.

Alternatively, the AGN might be turned off or in a faint state, with a higher activity in the past being inferred from the optical emission lines, whose emitting region is far from the nucleus (e.g., Eracleous et al. 1995). Also, the radio observations were made a few years before the Chandra ones. This scenario might thus explain their relatively low $`L_\mathrm{X}`$/$`L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }`$ ratios and their relatively high $`L_{5\mathrm{G}\mathrm{H}\mathrm{z}}`$/$`L_\mathrm{X}`$ ratios. If this is the case, the size of the radio core can be used to constrain the era of the active phase in the recent past. The upper limits on the size of the core estimated from the beam size ($``$ 2.5 mas) are 0.16, 0.19, and 0.48 pc for NGC 2787, NGC 5866, and NGC 6500, respectively (Falcke et al. 2000). Therefore, the AGN must have been active until $`<`$0.52, $`<`$0.60, and $`<`$1.6 years, respectively, before the VLBA observations (made in 1997 June) and inactive at the epochs (2000 Jan – 2002 Jan, see Table 1) of the X-ray observations. This is an ad hoc proposal and such abrupt declines of activity are quite unusual, but it cannot be completely excluded.

It may also be possible that the ionized gas inferred from the optical emission lines is ionized by some sources other than an AGN, such as hot stars. If the observed X-rays reflect the intrinsic luminosities of the AGN, a problem with the AGN scenario for the three objects NGC 2787, NGC 5866, and NGC 6500 is that these galaxies have very large $`\nu L_\nu `$(5 GHz)/$`L_\mathrm{X}`$ ratios, and would thus be among the radio loudest LLAGNs. The presence of hot stars in the nuclear region of NGC 6500 is suggested by UV spectroscopy (Maoz et al. 1998). Maoz et al. (1998) studied the energy budget for NGC 6500 by using the H$`\alpha `$ and UV luminosity at 1300 A and showed that the observed UV luminosity is insufficient to power the H$`\alpha `$ luminosity even if a stellar population with the Salpeter initial mass function and a high mass cutoff of 120$`M_{}`$ are assumed. This result indicates that a power source in addition to hot stars must contribute significantly, and supports the obscured AGN interpretation discussed above.

The first possibility, i.e., an obscured low-luminosity AGN as the source of the X-ray emission, seems preferable for NGC 2787, NGC 5866 and NGC 6500, although some other source(s) may contribute to the optical emission lines. Additional lines of evidence which support the presence of an AGN include the fact that all three of these galaxies (NGC 2787, NGC 5866, and NGC 6500) have VLBI-detected, sub-pc scale, nuclear radio core sources (Falcke et al. 2000), a broad H$`\alpha `$ component (in NGC 2787, and an ambiguous detection in NGC 5866; Ho et al. 1997b), a variable radio core in NGC 2787, and a jet-like linear structure in a high-resolution radio map of NGC 6500 with the VLBA (Falcke et al. 2000). Only an upper limit to the X-ray flux is obtained for NGC 5866. If an X-ray nucleus is present in this galaxy and its luminosity is only slightly below the upper limit, this source could be an AGN obscured by a column density $`N_\mathrm{H}`$$`10^{23}`$ cm-2 or larger. If the apparent X-ray luminosity of the nucleus of NGC 5866 is much lower than the observed upper limit, and the intrinsic X-ray luminosity conforms to the typical $`L_\mathrm{X}`$/$`L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }`$ ratio for LLAGN ($`\mathrm{log}`$ $`L_\mathrm{X}`$/$`L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }`$ $`12`$), then the X-ray source must be almost completely obscured. The optical classification (transition object) suggests the presence of an ionizing source other than an AGN, so the low observed $`L_\mathrm{X}`$/$`L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }`$ ratio could alternatively be a result of enhanced H$`\alpha `$ emission powered by this other ionizing source.

The X-ray results presented above show that the presence of a flat (or inverted) spectrum compact radio core is a very good indicator of the presence of an AGN even if its luminosity is very low. On the other hand, NGC 4550, which does not possess a radio core, shows no evidence for the presence of an AGN and all the three possibilities discussed above are viable. If the ROSAT detection is real (Halderson et al. 2001), the time variability between the ROSAT and Chandra fluxes may indicate the presence of an AGN (see Appendix).

It is notable that type 2 LINERs without a flat spectrum compact radio core may be heterogeneous in nature. For instance, some LINER 2s without a compact radio core (e.g., NGC 404 and transition 2 object NGC 4569) are most probably driven by stellar processes (Maoz et al. 1998; Terashima et al. 2000b; Eracleous et al. 2002).

### 5.2 Obscured LLAGNs

In our sample, we found at least three highly absorbed LLAGNs (NGC 3169, NGC 3226, and NGC 4548). In addition, if the X-ray faint objects discussed in section 5.1 are indeed AGNs, they are most probably highly absorbed with $`N_\mathrm{H}`$$`>10^{23}`$ cm-2. Among these absorbed objects, NGC 2787 is classified as a LINER 1.9, NGC 3169, NGC 4548, and NGC 6500 as LINER 2s, and NGC 5866 as a transition 2 object. Thus, heavily absorbed LINER 2s, of which few are known, are found in the present observations demonstrating that radio selection is a valuable technique for finding obscured AGNs. Along with heavily obscured LLAGNs known in low-luminosity Seyfert 2s (e.g., NGC 2273, NGC 2655, NGC 3079, NGC 4941, and NGC 5194; Terashima et al. 2002a), our observations show that at least some type 2 LLAGNs are simply low-luminosity counterparts of luminous Seyferts in which heavy absorption is often observed (e.g., Risaliti, Maiolino, & Salvati 1999). However, some LINER 2s (e.g., NGC 4594, Terashima et al. 2002a; NGC 4374, Finoguenov & Jones 2001; NGC 4486, Wilson & Yang 2002) and low-luminosity Seyfert 2s (NGC 3147; section 4 and Appendix) show no strong absorption. Therefore, the orientation-dependent unified scheme (e.g., Antonucci 1993) does not always apply to AGNs in the low-luminosity regime, as suggested by Terashima et al. (2002a).

### 5.3 Radio Loudness of LLAGNs

Combination of X-ray and radio observations is valuable for investigating a number of areas of AGN physics, including the “radio loudness”, the origin of jets, and the structure of accretion disks. Low-luminosity AGNs (LINERs and low-luminosity Seyfert galaxies) are thought to be radiating at very low Eddington ratios ($`L_{\mathrm{bol}}`$/$`L_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$) and may possess an advection-dominated accretion flow (ADAF; see e.g., Quataert 2002 for a recent review). A study of radio loudness in LLAGNs can constrain the jet production efficiency by an ADAF-type disk. Earlier studies have suggested that LLAGNs tend to be radio loud compared to more luminous Seyferts based on the spectral energy distributions of seven LLAGNs (Ho 1999) and, for a larger sample, on the conventional definition of radio loudness $`R_\mathrm{O}=L_\nu `$(5 GHz)/$`L_\nu `$(B) (the subscript “O”, which stands for optical, is usually omitted but we use it here to distinguish from $`R_\mathrm{X}`$ — see below), with $`R_\mathrm{O}>10`$ being radio loud (Kellermann et al. 1989, 1994; Visnovsky et al. 1992; Stocke et al. 1992; Ho & Peng 2001). Ho & Peng (2001) measured the luminosities of the nuclei by spatial analysis of optical images obtained with HST to reduce the contribution from stellar light. A caveat in the use of optical measurements for the definition of radio loudness is extinction, which will lead to an overestimate of $`R_\mathrm{O}`$ if not properly allowed for. Although Ho & Peng (2001) used only type 1–1.9 objects, some objects of these types show high absorption columns in their X-ray spectra. In this subsection, we study radio loudness by comparing radio and hard X-ray luminosities. Since the unabsorbed luminosity for objects with $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ $`\stackrel{>}{}`$$`10^{23}`$ cm-2 can be reliably measured in the 2–10 keV band, which is accessible to ASCA, XMM-Newton, and Chandra, and such columns correspond to $`A_\mathrm{V}`$ $`\stackrel{>}{}`$50 mag, it is clear that replacement of optical by hard X-ray luminosity potentially yields considerable advantages. In addition, the high spatial resolutions of XMM-Newton and especially Chandra usually allow the nuclear X-ray emission to be identified unambiguously, while the optical emission of LLAGN can be confused by surrounding starlight.

In the following analysis, radio data at 5 GHz taken from the literature are used since fluxes at this frequency are widely available for various classes of objects. We used primarily radio luminosities obtained with the VLA at $`\stackrel{<}{}`$$`1^{\prime \prime }`$ resolution for the present sample. High resolution VLA data at 5 GHz are not available for several objects. For four such cases, VLBA observations at 5 GHz with 150 mas resolution are published in the literature (Falcke et al. 2000) and are used here. For two objects, we estimated 5 GHz fluxes from 15 GHz data by assuming a spectral slope of $`\alpha =0`$ (cf. Nagar et al. 2001). The radio luminosities used in the following analysis are summarized in Table 5. Since our sample is selected based on the presence of a compact radio core, the sample could be biased to more radio loud objects. Therefore, we constructed a larger sample by adding objects taken from the literature for which 5 GHz radio, 2–10 keV X-ray, and $`R_\mathrm{O}`$ measurements are available.

First, we introduce the ratio $`R_\mathrm{X}=\nu L_\nu `$(5 GHz)/$`L_\mathrm{X}`$ as a measure of radio loudness and compare the ratio with the conventional $`R_\mathrm{O}`$ parameter. The X-ray luminosity $`L_\mathrm{X}`$ in the 2–10 keV band (source rest frame), corrected for absorption, is used 111Monochromatic X-ray luminosities can also be used to define the radio loudness instead of luminosities in the 2–10 keV band; such a definition would be analogous to $`R_\mathrm{O}`$, which utilizes monochromatic B-band luminosities. This alternative provides completely identical results if the X-ray spectral shape is known and the range of spectral slopes is not large. For example, the conversion factor $`L_\nu `$(2 keV)/$`L_\mathrm{X}`$ is 0.31, 0.26, and 0.22 keV-1 for photon indices of 2, 1.8, and 1.6, respectively, and no absorption.. We examine the behavior of $`R_\mathrm{X}`$ using samples of AGN over a wide range of luminosity, including LLAGN, the Seyfert sample of Ho & Peng (2001) and PG quasars which are also used in their analysis. $`R_\mathrm{O}`$ parameters and radio luminosities were taken from Ho & Peng (2001) for the Seyferts and Kellermann et al. (1989) for the PG sample. The values of $`R_\mathrm{O}`$ in Kellermann et al. (1989) have been recalculated by using only the core component of the radio luminosities. The optical and radio luminosities of the PG quasars were calculated assuming $`\alpha _\mathrm{r}=0.5`$ and $`\alpha _\mathrm{o}=1.0`$ ($`S_\nu \nu ^\alpha `$). The X-ray luminosities (mostly measured with ASCA) were compiled from Terashima et al. (2002b), Weaver, Gelbord, & Yaqoob (2001), George et al. (2000), Reeves & Turner (2000), Iwasawa et al. (1997, 2000), Sambruna, Eracleous, & Mushotzky (1999), Nandra et al. (1997), Smith & Done (1996), and Cappi et al. (1996). Note that only a few objects (NGC 4565, NGC 4579, and NGC 5033) in our radio selected sample have reliable measurements of nuclear $`L_\nu `$(B).

Fig. 3. compares the parameters $`R_\mathrm{O}`$ and $`R_\mathrm{X}`$ for the Seyferts and PG sample. These two parameters correlate well for most Seyferts. Some Seyferts have higher $`R_\mathrm{O}`$ values than indicated by most Seyferts. This could be a result of extinction in the optical band. Seyferts showing X-ray spectra absorbed by a column greater than $`10^{22}`$ cm-2 (NGC 2639, 4151, 4258, 4388, 4395, 5252, and 5674) are shown as open circles in Fig. 3. At least four of them have a value of $`R_\mathrm{O}`$ larger than indicated by the correlation. The correlation between $`\mathrm{log}R_\mathrm{O}`$ and $`\mathrm{log}R_\mathrm{X}`$ for the less absorbed Seyferts can be described as $`\mathrm{log}R_\mathrm{O}`$ = 0.88 $`\mathrm{log}R_\mathrm{X}`$ \+ 5.0. According to this relation, the boundary between radio loud and radio quiet object ($`\mathrm{log}R_\mathrm{O}`$ = 1) corresponds to $`\mathrm{log}R_\mathrm{X}=4.5`$. The values of $`R_\mathrm{O}`$ and $`R_\mathrm{X}`$ for a few obscured Seyferts are consistent with the correlation, indicating that optical extinction is not perfectly correlated with the absorption column density inferred from X-ray spectra.

The PG quasars show systematically lower $`R_\mathrm{O}`$ values than those of Seyferts at a given $`\mathrm{log}R_\mathrm{X}`$. For the former objects, $`\mathrm{log}R_\mathrm{O}=1`$ corresponds to $`\mathrm{log}R_\mathrm{X}=3.5`$. This apparently reflects a luminosity dependence of the shape of the SED: luminous objects have steeper optical-X-ray slopes $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}=1.41.7`$ ($`S\nu ^\alpha `$; e.g., Elvis et al. 1994, Brandt, Laor, & Wills 2000), where $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}`$ is often measured as the spectral index between 2200 A and 2 keV, while less luminous AGNs have $`\alpha _{\mathrm{ox}}=1.01.2`$ (Ho 1999). This is related to the fact that luminous objects show a more prominent “big blue bump” in their spectra. Fig. 8 of Ho (1999) demonstrates that low-luminosity objects are typically 1–1.5 orders of magnitude fainter in the optical band than luminous quasars for an given X-ray luminosity. Note that none of the PG quasars used here shows a high absorption column in its X-ray spectrum below 10 keV.

The definition of radio loudness using the hard X-ray flux ($`R_\mathrm{X}`$) appears to be more robust than that using the optical flux because X-rays are less affected by both extinction at optical wavelengths and the detailed shape of the blue bump, as noted above. Further, measurements of nuclear X-ray fluxes of Seyferts and LLAGNs with Chandra are easier than measurements of nuclear optical fluxes, since in the latter case the nuclear light must be separated from the surrounding starlight, a difficult process for LLAGNs.

Fig. 4 shows the X-ray luminosity dependence of $`R_\mathrm{X}`$. In this plot, the LLAGN sample discussed in the present paper is

shown in addition to the Seyfert and PG samples used above. This is an “X-ray version” of the $`\mathrm{log}R_\mathrm{O}`$-$`M_B^{\mathrm{nuc}}`$ plot (Fig. 4 in Ho & Peng 2001). Radio galaxies taken from Sambruna et al. (1999) are also added and we use radio luminosities from the core only. Our plot shows that a large fraction ($`70`$%) of LLAGNs ($`L_\mathrm{X}`$$`<10^{42}`$ ergs s-1) are “radio loud”. This is a confirmation of Ho & Peng’s (2001) finding. Note, however, that our sample is not complete in any sense, and this radio-loud fraction should be measured using a more complete sample. Since radio emission in LLAGNs is likely to be dominated by emission from jets (Nagar et al. 2001; Ulvestad & Ho 2001), these results suggest that, in LLAGN, the fraction of the accretion energy that powers a jet, as opposed to electromagnetic radiation, is larger than in more luminous Seyfert galaxies and quasars. Since LLAGNs are thought to have an ADAF-type accretion flow, such might indicate that an ADAF can produce jets more efficiently than the geometrically thin disk believed present in more luminous Seyferts.

The three LLAGNs with the largest $`R_\mathrm{X}`$ in Fig. 4 are the three X-ray faint objects discussed in section 5.1 (NGC 2787, NGC 5866, and NGC 6500) and which are most probably obscured AGNs. If their intrinsic X-ray luminosities are 1–2 orders of magnitude higher than those observed, their values of $`R_\mathrm{X}`$ become smaller by this factor and are then in the range of other LLAGNs. Even if we exclude these three LLAGNs, the radio loudness of LLAGNs is distributed over a wide range: the radio-loudest LLAGNs have $`R_\mathrm{X}`$ values similar to radio galaxies and radio-loud quasars, while some LLAGNs are as radio quiet as radio-quiet quasars.

A comparison with blazars is of interest to compare our sample with objects for which the nuclear emission is known to be dominated by a relativistic jet and thus strongly beamed. The average $`\mathrm{log}R_\mathrm{X}`$ for high-energy peaked BL Lac objects (HBLs), low-energy peaked BL Lac objects (LBLs), and flat spectrum radio quasars (FSRQs) are –3.10, –1.27, and –0.95, respectively, where we used the average radio and X-ray luminosities for a large sample of blazars given in Table 3 of Donato et al. (2001). The average $`\mathrm{log}R_\mathrm{X}`$ for HBLs is similar to that for LLAGNs in our sample, while the latter two classes are about two orders of magnitude more radio loud than LLAGNs. Although LLAGNs and HBLs have similar values of $`\mathrm{log}R_\mathrm{X}`$, the spectral slope in the X-ray band is different: LLAGNs have a photon index in the range 1.7–2.0 (see also Terashima et al. 2002), while HBLs usually show steeper spectra (photon index $`>`$ 2, e.g., Fig. 1 in Donato et al. 2001), and the X-ray emission is believed to be dominated by synchrotron radiation. Furthermore, blazars with a lower bolometric luminosity tend to have a synchrotron peak at a higher frequency and a steeper X-ray spectral slope than higher bolometric luminosity blazars (Donato et al. 2001).

We also constructed an $`R_\mathrm{X}`$-$`L_\mathrm{X}`$ plot (Fig. 5) using the total radio luminosities of the radio source (i.e. including the core, jets, lobes, and hot spots, if present). The radio data were compiled from Véron-Cetty & Véron (2001), Kellermann et al. (1989), and Sambruna et al. (1999). The PG sample and other quasars are shown with different symbols. This plot appears similar to Fig. 4 for LLAGNs, Seyferts, and radio-quiet quasars since these objects do not possess powerful jets or lobes and off-nuclear radio emission associated with the AGN is generally of low luminosity (Ulvestad & Wilson 1989, Nagar et al. 2001, Ho & Ulvestad 2001, Kellermann et al. 1989). On the other hand, radio galaxies have powerful extended radio emission and consequently the $`R_\mathrm{X}`$ values calculated using the total radio luminosities become higher than if only nuclear luminosities are used. We used the same X-ray luminosities as in Fig. 4, because jets, lobes, and hot spots are almost always much weaker than the nucleus in X-rays. In fact, in our observations of LLAGNs, we found no extended emission directly related to the AGN. Thus, the differences between Fig. 4 and Fig. 5 result from the extended radio emission.

## 6 Summary

Fourteen galaxies with a nuclear radio source having a flat or inverted spectrum have been observed with Chandra with a typical exposure time of 2 ksec. An X-ray nucleus is detected in all but one object (NGC 5866). 11 galaxies have X-ray and H$`\alpha `$ luminosities in good accord with the correlation known for AGNs over a wide range of luminosity, which indicates that these objects are AGNs and that the AGN is the dominant power source of their optical emission lines. Their X-ray luminosities are between $`5\times 10^{38}`$ and $`8\times 10^{41}`$ ergs s-1. The three objects NGC 2787, NGC 5866, and NGC 6500 have significantly lower X-ray luminosities than expected from the $`L_\mathrm{X}`$-$`L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }`$ correlation. Various observations suggest that these objects are most likely to be heavily obscured AGNs. These observational results show that radio and hard X-ray observations provide an efficient way to find LLAGN in nearby galaxies, even if the nuclei are heavily obscured.

One object (the LINER 2 NGC 4550), which does not show a radio core, was also observed for comparison. No X-ray nucleus is detected. If the X-ray source detected in this galaxy with ROSAT is indeed the nucleus, the nucleus must be variable in X-rays, which would indicate the presence of an AGN.

We have used the ratio $`R_\mathrm{X}=\nu L_\nu `$(5 GHz)/$`L_\mathrm{X}`$ as a measure of radio loudness and found that a large fraction of LLAGNs are radio loud. This confirms earlier results based on nuclear luminosities in the optical band, but our results based on hard X-ray measurements are much less affected by obscuration and the detailed shape of the “big blue bump”. We speculate that the increase in $`R_\mathrm{X}`$ as $`L_\mathrm{X}`$ decreases below $`10^{42}`$ ergs s-1 may result from the presence of an advection-dominated accretion flow in the inner part of the accretion flow in low-luminosity objects. However, the steep X-ray spectra in our sample of LLAGNs rule out high temperature thermal bremsstrahlung as the X-ray emission mechanism.

Y.T. is supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellowship for Young Scientists. This research was supported by NASA through grants NAG81027 and NAG81755 to the University of Maryland.

## Appendix A Notes on Individual Objects

In this Appendix, we compare our results with previously published results particularly in the hard X-ray band obtained with ASCA and Chandra. The optical spectroscopic classification is given in parentheses after the object name.

NGC 2787 (L1.9). — A result on the same data set is presented in Ho et al. (2001). Our detected number of counts is in good agreement with their result.

NGC 3147 (S2). — This object was observed with ASCA in 1993 September and the observed flux was $`1.6\times 10^{12}`$ ergs s-1cm-2 in the 2–10 keV band (Ptak et al. 1996, 1999; Terashima et al. 2002b). Our Chandra image is dominated by the nucleus and shows that the off-nuclear source contribution within the ASCA beam is negligible. Therefore, a comparison between the observed Chandra flux ($`3.6\times 10^{12}`$ ergs s-1cm-2), which is 2.3 times larger than that of ASCA, implies time variability providing additional evidence for the presence of an AGN.

In the ASCA spectrum, a strong Fe-K emission line is detected at $`6.49\pm 0.09`$ keV (source rest frame) with an equivalent width of $`490_{230}^{+220}`$ eV. One interpretation of this relatively large equivalent width is that the nucleus is obscured by a large column density and the observed X-rays are scattered emission (Ptak et al. 1996). However, the luminosity ratios $`L_\mathrm{X}`$/$`L_{\mathrm{H}\alpha }`$ and $`L_\mathrm{X}`$/$`L_{[\mathrm{O}\mathrm{III}]\lambda 5007}`$ suggest small obscuration (Terashima et al. 2002b).

The observed variability supports the interpretation that the X-ray emission is not scattered emission from a heavily obscured nucleus. This galaxy is an example of a Seyfert 2 with only little absorption in the X-ray band.

NGC 3226 (L1.9). — This galaxy was observed with the Chandra HETG in 1999 December (George et al. 2001). They obtained an intrinsic luminosity of $`3.2\times 10^{40}`$ ($`(2.74.6)\times 10^{40}`$ ergs s-1, 68% confidence limit) in the 2–10 keV band after conversion to a distance of 23.4 Mpc. This luminosity is consistent with our value of $`5.5\times 10^{40}`$ ($`(4.67.0)\times 10^{40}`$ ergs s-1, 90% confidence range) after correction for absorption.

NGC 4203 (L1.9). — A result on the same data set is presented in Ho et al. (2001). The nucleus of this object has a large X-ray flux and pileup is severe in this observation. A bright source is seen 2 SE of the nucleus which was also separated from the nucleus with ASCA SIS observations (Iyomoto et al. 1998; Terashima et al. 2002b). The Chandra observations show that there is no source confusing the ASCA observation of the nucleus. Therefore, we used an ASCA flux in the discussions.

NGC 4278 (L1.9). — A result on the same data set is presented by Ho et al. (2001).

We analyzed archival ASCA data observed on 1998 May 24. The effective exposure times after standard data screening were 19.6 ksec for each SIS and 23.9 ksec for each GIS. The ASCA spectrum is well fitted with a power law with a photon index 1.85 (1.77$``$1.94). The best-fit absorption column is $`N_\mathrm{H}`$=0, with an upper limit of $`5.4\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2. The observed flux in the 2$``$10 keV band is $`2.0\times 10^{12}`$ ergs s-1cm-2.

Our Chandra image in the hard energy band is dominated by the nucleus and no bright source is seen in the field. Therefore, the hard X-ray measurement with ASCA seems reliable. The Chandra flux in the 2–10 keV band ($`7.1\times 10^{13}`$ ergs s-1cm-2) is about one-third of the ASCA flux indicating variability.

NGC 4550 (L2). — This source is not detected with the present Chandra observation. A detection with the ROSAT PSPC is reported by Halderson et al. (2001). The observed ROSAT flux in the 0.1–2.4 keV band is $`1.65\times 10^{13}`$ ergs s-1 cm-2. This ROSAT source is offset from the optical nucleus by 10′′. If this source is indeed the nucleus, our non detection by Chandra ($`F_{0.12.4\mathrm{keV}}<6\times 10^{15}`$ ergs s-1 cm-2) indicates time variability.

NGC 4565 (S1.9). — The nuclear region is dominated by two sources: the nucleus and an off-nuclear source which is brighter than the nucleus. The observed Chandra fluxes of these two source in the 2–10 keV band ($`3.2\times 10^{13}`$ and $`5.8\times 10^{13}`$ ergs s-1cm-2) are slightly lower than those obtained with ASCA ($`5.3\times 10^{13}`$ and $`1.1\times 10^{12}`$ ergs s-1cm-2; Mizuno et al. 1999; Terashima et al. 2002b), respectively. These differences appear not to be significant given the statistical, calibration, and spectral-modeling uncertainties. (The uncertainties on the Chandra fluxes are dominated by the statistical errors, which are $`30`$ % for the off-nuclear source and $``$50% for the nucleus, while the error in the ASCA fluxes is dominated by calibration uncertainties of $`10`$ %.)

The Chandra spectrum of the off-nuclear source can be fitted by an absorbed power law model with a photon index of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.89_{0.19}^{+0.24}`$ and $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ = $`1.5_{0.3}^{+0.5}\times 10^{21}`$ cm-2. A multicolor disk blackbody model also provides a good fit with best-fit parameters $`kT_{\mathrm{in}}=0.90_{0.16}^{+0.14}`$ keV and $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ = $`4.2_{4.0}^{+3.5}\times 10^{20}`$ cm-2.

NGC 4579 (L1.9/S1.9). — A result on the same data set is presented by Ho et al. (2001). The nucleus is significantly piled up in the Chandra observation. The Chandra hard band image is dominated by the nucleus and no bright source is seen in the field. Therefore, we used ASCA fluxes observed in 1995 and 1998. Detailed ASCA results are published in Terashima et al. (1998, 2000c).

A long (33.9 ksec exposure) Chandra observation performed in 2000 May is presented in Eracleous et al. (2002). The 2–10 keV flux reported is $`5.2\times 10^{12}`$ ergs s-1cm-2 which is similar to that of the second ASCA observation in 1998 ($`(5.36.1)\times 10^{12}`$ ergs s-1cm-2).

NGC 5033 (S1.5). — A result on the same data set is presented in Ho et al. (2001). The nucleus is significantly piled up in the Chandra observation. The five off-nuclear sources shown in Table 3 are located within the ASCA beam. The sum of the counts from these sources is less than 44 counts in the 2–8 keV band, while 380 counts are detected from the nucleus before correction for pileup. Therefore, the ASCA flux ($`5.5\times 10^{12}`$ ergs s-1cm-2; Terashima et al. 1999, 2002b) is probably larger than the true nuclear flux by $`10`$% or less, unless the off-nuclear sources show drastic time variability. We used the ASCA flux without any correction for the off-nuclear source contribution. The 10% uncertainty does not affect any of the conclusions.

We performed a spectral fit to the brightest off-nuclear source (CXOU J131329.7+363523). An absorbed power law model was applied, and $`N_\mathrm{H}`$ = 0.40 ($`<`$1.2) $`\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2 and a photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.5\pm 1.1`$ were obtained.

NGC 5866 (T2). — Extended emission of diameter $``$ 30′′ ($``$2 kpc) is seen. The spectrum of this emission may be represented by a MEKAL plasma model with $`kT`$ 1 keV and abundance of 0.15 solar. This component could be identified with a gaseous halo of this S0 galaxy.


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# A Chandra observation of the H2O megamaser IC 2560

## 1 introduction

IC 2560 is a relatively nearby ($`D=26`$ Mpc) barred spiral galaxy, classified as a Seyfert 2 (Fairall 1986; Kewley et al 2001). It is notable for exhibiting luminous H2O maser emission from its nucleus (Braatz, Wilson, & Henkel 1996). This maser emission resembles that from the archetypal water megamaser source NGC 4258 in that high-velocity emission is seen up to $`\mathrm{\Delta }V400`$ km s-1 away from the systemic velocity, the systemic emission is much stronger than the high-velocity emission, and centripetal acceleration of systemic velocity features has been reported (Ishihara et al. 2001). The high-velocity emission has not yet been imaged; if the data are interpreted in the framework of a Keplerian disk, as in NGC 4258, the implied central mass is $`M_c2.8\times 10^6`$ M. Ishihara et al. also analyzed an ASCA observation of IC 2560 and concluded that it possesses a fairly heavily obscured ($`N_H3\times 10^{23}`$ cm-2) but low luminosity ($`L_{210\mathrm{k}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{V}}10^{41}`$ erg s-1) X-ray source.

In this paper we report on a short Chandra observation of IC 2560, which reveals spatially extended soft X-ray emission and a substantially different nature to the hard X-ray source than was inferred by Ishihara et al. (2001) from the ASCA data. Throughout we assume the distance to the galaxy to be 26 Mpc, giving an angular scale of 120 pc arcsec-1.

## 2 Observation and data reduction

IC 2560 was observed with Chandra X-ray Observatory (hereafter Chandra, Weisskopf et al 2000) on 2000 October 29-30, using the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS). The galaxy was positioned on the back-illuminated CCD, ACIS-S3 detector. The focal plane temperature was $`120^{}`$ during this observation. The data reduction was carried out using the Chandra Interactive Analysis of Observation (CIAO) version 2.2 package and calibration files in the calibration databese (CALDB) version 2.10. The S3 detector has been inspected for background flares using a source-free region in the 2.5–7 keV band. The detector background appears to be stable during this observation: the background light curve shows that all the data points are within 30 per cent of the mean value. Since the X-ray source of interest is barely extended beyond the point spread function (see Section 3.1), little impact from such moderate background flares is expected on the spectral data of the source. Therefore no background flare rejection has been applied and the resulting good exposure time is 9.8 ks. The mean count rate of the source, corrected for the background, is $`3.2\times 10^2`$ ct s-1, sufficiently low that the data are unaffected by pile-up. An aspect offset, which was present in the original event file, has been corrected using the latest 2002-May-02 alignment file; the observed X-ray emission peaks at the position R.A.= 10h16m18.7s, Dec.= –3333′49$`\stackrel{}{.}`$6s (J2000), about 0.2 arcsec away from the nuclear position in NED111NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED) which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. and well within the absolute astrometric uncertainty ($`0.6`$ arcsec) of Chandra pointings. The spectral analysis presented below was performed with the spectral analysis software, XSPEC version 11.2.

## 3 results

### 3.1 Extended X-ray emission

X-ray emission from IC2560 is found to be extended in the Chandra image. Fig. 1 shows the 0.4–7 keV band ACIS-S3 image of IC2560. The image suggests that there are a faint extension to the SW up to 6 arcsec ($`720`$ pc), and possibly to the NE up to 5 arcsec ($`600`$ pc), although the significance of these features is low ($`2\sigma `$). The azimuthally-averaged radial surface brightness profile of the image in Fig. 1 is shown in Fig. 2. To investigate the extension of the X-ray core, a point spread function (PSF) is computed and plotted in Fig. 2 for a comparison. The PSF was computed for the same position on the detector as that of IC2560 in this observation, and the energy, at which the PSF was constructed, was assumed to be 1 keV, as much of the detected counts are distributed around that energy (see the energy spectrum in Fig. 3). A simple comparison with the PSF indicates that the core region of IC2560 is extended with a significance of larger than $`3\sigma `$ and at least by 80 pc in radius. The hard band (3–7 keV) image shows a possible elongation in the SE–NW direction, but with only 58 counts detected in the energy range, the reality of this feature is highly uncertain.

### 3.2 Spectrum

Fig. 3 shows the Chandra ACIS-S spectrum extracted from a circular region with radius of 2.5 arcsec centred on the X-ray peak. A very strong Fe K$`\alpha `$ line at 6.4 keV is clearly seen on a faint, flat continuum. A steep rise of soft X-ray emission is seen below 2 keV, which appears to be the major component of the extended emission. When the 0.4–7 keV data are fitted by a broken power-law modified only by Galactic absorption222This value is obtained by averaging the data of the HI map over a 1 degree2 field at the position of the galaxy, and may not be an exact column density towards the position of IC2560. However, any fluctuations within the field are not expected to be large enough to affect our results. ($`N_\mathrm{H}`$$`=6.5\times 10^{20}`$cm-2, Dickey & Lockman 1990) plus a gaussian for the Fe K line (Fig. 3), a spectral break is found at $`E_{\mathrm{br}}=2.0_{0.4}^{+0.5}`$ keV with photon indices of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2.8_{0.2}^{+0.2}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=0.5_{0.7}^{+0.3}`$ below and above the break energy, respectively (the quoted errors throughout are 90 per cent confidence limits for one parameter of interest). The line centroid of the Fe K emission is $`6.41\pm 0.03`$ keV when corrected for the galaxy’s redshift. The line is not spectrally resolved: the upper limit to the dispersion of a gaussian is 150 eV. Besides the Fe K line, the residuals of the above fit suggest the presence of soft X-ray emission features, the origin of which is discussed later. The fluxes as observed are $`5.7\times 10^{14}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 in the 0.5–2 keV band, and $`3.6\times 10^{13}`$ erg cm-2 s-1 in the 2–10 keV band. The 0.5–2 keV luminosity corrected for Galactic absorption is $`5.0\times 10^{39}`$ erg s-1. The observed 2–10 keV luminosity is $`2.7\times 10^{40}`$ erg s-1, of which half is contributed by the iron K line.

The flat hard continuum is consistent with a cold reflection spectrum (e.g., Iwasawa, Fabian & Matt 1997 for an example seen in NGC1068). A spectrum of reflection alone from an optically thick cold slab (e.g., computed using pexrav by Magdziarz & Zdziarski 1995 in XSPEC, assuming the incident source to have a power-law spectrum with $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=2`$) is in good agreement with the continuum shape above 3 keV. The Fe K line flux is $`(1.32\pm 0.55)\times 10^5`$ ph s-1 cm-2, and its equivalent width with respect to the reflection continuum is extremely large, $`3.6\pm 1.5`$ keV.

Based on the possible emission line features, the soft excess emission could be thermal emission (i.e., collisionally ionized plasma) arising from a nuclear starburst. A fit with a thermal emission spectrum (computed by mekal in XSPEC based on the model calculations of R. Mewe and J. Kaastra with updated Fe L calculations by D.A. Liedahl; Mewe Greonenschild & van den Oord 1985; Kaastra 1992; Liedahl, Osterheld & Goldstein 1995) gives a temperature of $`kT=0.63_{0.11}^{+0.11}`$ keV and $`0.03_{0.02}^{+0.03}`$ solar metallicity. Since the implied metallicity from the fit is much too low to be realistic, this single temperature thermal emission model may not be appropriate. It is unclear whether there is a nuclear starburst in IC2560 capable of producing the thermal emission. Although a number of HII regions distributed along spiral arms have been imaged with H$`\alpha `$+\[NII\] (Tsvetanov & Petrosian 1995), these HII regions are located 20 arcsec or more away from the nucleus where the X-ray emission is observed, and none of them are detected in the Chandra image. The optical light from the nucleus is dominated by Seyfert 2 emission. The 1.6 $`\mu `$m luminosity of the unresolved nucleus, $`2.3\times 10^{40}`$erg s-1, as measured with the Near-Infrared Camera and Multiobject Spectrometer (NICMOS) on Hubble Space Telescope (Quillen et al 2001), is as low as typically seen in the non-Seyfert control sample, suggesting that the near infrared emission from the nucleus of IC2560 is largely due to a stellar cluster. Since the near-infrared to soft X-ray luminosity ratio is more than an order of magnitude too low to match those of starburst galaxies, a nuclear starburst does not appear to be powerful enough to produce the observed soft X-rays. An alternative source for the soft X-ray emission is extended photoionized gas. A few suggestive features in the energy range between 0.5–1.4 keV (Fig. 4) could be due to recombination lines and radiative recombination continua from highly ionized N, O, Ne, Fe (L-shell emission) and Mg. The steep rise of soft X-ray emission towards lower energies could be dominated by these and other emission features, which are not resolved at the spectral resolution of a CCD, and a scattered nuclear continuum may not necessarily be present. Higher resolution spectroscopy is required to test this hypothesis.

We analyzed the ASCA data of IC2560, available from the public archive, and confirmed the presence of a strong iron K line with $`EW=2.2\pm 0.8`$ keV at an energy of 6.4 keV in the spectrum. Prior to our Chandra observation, two contrary claims have been reported for the ASCA data: Risaliti, Maiolino & Salvati (1999) found an enormous iron line with $`EW=6.3_{3.0}^{+2.6}`$ keV at $`6.56_{0.15}^{+0.25}`$ keV, suggesting a Compton-thick source, while Ishihara et al (2001) interpret the hard X-ray emission as an absorbed power-law with $`N_\mathrm{H}`$$`3\times 10^{23}`$ cm-2 without noting the iron line. Our Chandra data support the interpretation of Risaliti et al (1999), although our ASCA results do not agree exactly.

## 4 Discussion

### 4.1 The true luminosity of the hidden active nucleus

The hard X-ray spectrum dominated by an iron K line indicates the absence of direct continuum emission from a central source in the Chandra band, meaning that we are seeing only reflected light from a hidden nucleus. The absorption column density must be larger than $`N_\mathrm{H}`$$`1\times 10^{24}`$ cm-2, i.e., the X-ray source is Compton-thick. How much of the intrinsic luminosity emitted by the hidden nucleus is seen in reflection depends on the obscuration/reflection geometry. Reflection from cold material, as inferred from the iron line energy and the flat hard X-ray continuum, is not an efficient process, since photoelectric absorption within the reflector suppresses reflected light significantly, in particular at low energies. With the observed continuum luminosity of $`1.3\times 10^{40}`$ erg s-1 in the 2–10 keV band, the minimum incident luminosity to yield the reflection is about $`2.6\times 10^{41}`$ erg s-1. However, in a realistic toroidal geometry in which the incident source is hidden from our direct view, the true value will be much larger.

We estimate the upper limit to the 2–10 keV luminosity to be $`3\times 10^{42}`$erg s-1, 10 per cent of the infrared ($``$ bolometric) luminosity, $`L_{81000\mu \mathrm{m}}3\times 10^{43}`$ erg s-1 (obtained from the Infra-Red Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) measurements using the formula given in Sanders & Mirabel (1996)), assuming the typical 2-10 keV X-ray to bolometric luminosity ratio for Seyfert galaxies (e.g., Mushotzky, Done & Pounds 1993). The AGN luminosity is likely to be close to the above upper limit, given the warm IRAS colour ($`S_{60\mu \mathrm{m}}/S_{25\mu \mathrm{m}}=3.4`$) and the AGN-dominated nuclear optical spectrum, suggesting that the infrared emission is predominantly powered by a hidden active nucleus.

### 4.2 Large EW of Fe K line

The equivalent width for the iron K$`\alpha `$ line, in excess of 3 keV, is one of the largest measured among the reflection-dominated Seyfert 2 galaxies (see Matt et al 2001 and Levenson et al 2002 for recent compilations). Iron overabundance (2–3 solar) could be a possible reason (Ballantyne, Fabian & Ross 2002), but even with solar metallicity, an optically thick torus can produce a very large EW. In models assuming obscuring matter in a toroidal form, the Fe K line EW depends on the optical depth and geometry of the torus (Leahy & Creighton 1993; Ghisellini, Haardt & Matt 1994; Krolik, Madau & Życki 1994; Levenson et al 2002). All these models indicate that, in order to produce an EW as large as 3.6 keV, a torus needs to have a column density $`N_\mathrm{H}`$$`3\times 10^{24}`$ cm-2(or Thomson optical depth, $`\tau _\mathrm{T}2`$) and a small half-opening angle, $`\theta 20^{}`$, and to be viewed nearly edge-on.

The required column density is consistent with the lack of transmitted primary source emission in the Chandra spectrum, from which the lower limit of the line of sight absorption column density, $`N_\mathrm{H}`$$`1\times 10^{24}`$cm-2, has been derived (Section 4.1). The requirement of a small opening angle means that the X-ray absorbing matter should be located close to the central source. The inner radius of the water maser disk was inferred to be 0.07 pc (Ishihara et al 2001), but the accretion disk could extend inwards, with the inner part of the disk too cold to induce masing (Neufeld & Maloney 1995, hereafter NM95). Perhaps this dense ($`n>10^{10}`$ cm-3) inner part of the accretion disk may be the region where the X-ray absorption primarily occurs. However, in this case, the water maser-emitting part of the disk must be warped in order to see the X-ray flux directly, otherwise the X-rays from the central source will not impinge on the disk.

### 4.3 Water maser disk and accretion flow

If the geometry of the maser emission in IC 2560 is similar to that in NGC 4258, which has not yet been determined by imaging, then we can use the X-ray emission and the kinematic data to place constraints on fueling of the central massive black hole. The observed velocities of maser emission in IC 2560 imply that the outer disk radius is at $`R_{out}0.26`$ pc. Assuming that the maser emission is powered by the X-ray flux from the central source (Neufeld, Maloney & Conger 1994; NM95), as appears likely for the majority of H2O megamaser sources (see Maloney 2002 for a recent review), we can identify the outer radius of the disk with the location of the molecular to atomic phase transition (see equation 4 of NM95). For a hard X-ray luminosity of $`L_{210}=10^{42}L_{42}`$ erg s-1 and black hole mass $`M_c=10^6M_6`$ M, the ratio of the mass accretion rate to the viscosity parameter $`\alpha `$ is then

$$\frac{\dot{M}}{\alpha }6.2\times 10^3\left(\frac{R_{out}}{0.26\mathrm{pc}}\right)^{1.23}L_{42}^{0.53}M_6^{0.77}M_{}\mathrm{yr}^1$$
(1)
which, for the inferred mass of the central black hole $`M_c2.8\times 10^6`$ M, is $`\dot{M}/\alpha 2.8\times 10^3`$ M yr-1. Assuming that the bolometric luminosity is approximately ten times the 2–10 keV X-ray luminosity, the product of $`\alpha `$ and the radiative efficiency factor $`ϵ`$ is then $`\alpha ϵ0.06`$, similar to the value inferred for NGC 4258 (NM95). (In making this estimate we have assumed that flow through the disk is steady over the accretion timescale from the disk outer edge, and that the disk sees the true X-ray luminosity.) Although the fractional Eddington luminosity ($`0.03`$) and mass accretion rate are much higher than in NGC 4258, the efficiency of radiation appears to be similar. We also note that the Compton-thick obscuration of the hard X-ray source is consistent with the accretion disk itself acting as the obscurer, as in NGC 4258, given the larger derived value of $`\dot{M}/\alpha `$.

## Acknowledgements

ACF and KI thank Royal Society and PPARC, respectively, for support. PRM is supported by the National Science Foundation under grant AST 99-00871 and by NASA through Chandra X-Ray Observatory grant GO2-3112X.