text:
# A JOINT MID-INFRARED SPECTROSCOPIC AND X-RAY IMAGING INVESTIGATION OF LINER GALAXIES

## 1 INTRODUCTION AND MOTIVATION

Of the various classes of galaxies, low-ionization nuclear emission-line region galaxies (LINERs) represent one of the most captivating subsets of active galaxies yet they are the least understood. These galaxies show narrow optical emission lines of low ionization uncharacteristic of photoionization from normal stars (Heckman et al. 1980). The ionization mechanism responsible for these line ratios is still controversial and remains at the forefront of astrophysics today. LINERs constitute as much as one third of all nearby galaxies (e.g., Ho, Filippenko, & Sargent 1997) and nearly half of all nearby early-type galaxies (e.g., Stauffer 1982). Since Seyfert galaxies constitute only at most a few percent of the low luminosity active galactic nuclei (AGN) population, LINERs can potentially dominate the population of the low end of the AGN luminosity function and therefore can have a tremendous impact on several key critical issues ranging from the contribution of AGN to the infrared (IR) and X-ray background radiation to the origin and evolution of galaxies in general.

Many LINERs are expected to contain obscured nuclei. In fact, using the compilation by Carillo et al. (1999) of all LINERs studied in the literature, IR-bright LINERs (LFIR/LB$`>`$1) constitute nearly 80% of all nearby LINERs. In such galaxies, mid-IR spectroscopic and high spatial resolution X-ray observations are ideal probes of possible buried AGN cores. Mid-IR lines not only penetrate dust-enshrouded regions, but they also provide powerful tools to discriminate between gas photoionized by a central AGN or young stars, or shock-excited gas. Likewise, sensitive hard X-ray observations at high spatial resolution can provide a definite probe of obscured AGN, out to column densities of a few times 1024 cm-2. Detection of a single compact hard X-ray source coincident with the nucleus would constitute strong evidence for the existence of a central black hole. Those galaxies that reveal a compact hard X-ray nuclear source should also display high excitation fine structure lines in the mid-infrared, where dust obscuration is minimal.

There have been several recent optical spectroscopic and X-ray studies of nearby optically-selected LINER galaxies (e.g., Ho et al. 1993; 1997a,b; 2001, Eracleous et al. 2002). In these studies, detection of broad H$`\alpha `$ emission in some LINERs, observations of extended LINER emission in a number of galaxies, and X-ray morphology all indicate heterogeneity in the ionization mechanism responsible for the LINER spectra. Viable explanations include shock heating through cloud-cloud collisions in galaxy mergers or surrounding AGN, cooling flows, and photoionization by nonthermal energy sources or extremely hot stars (see review by Filipenko 1996). Because the nuclear regions of many LINERs can be obscured and the intrinsic continuum from the central energy source is often thermally reprocessed by dust and hence not directly observable, a definitive consensus on the true origin of the observed optical emission line spectrum in all LINERs has not been reached.

There have been very few IR spectroscopic and high spatial resolution X-ray imaging studies of nearby LINERs. While recent results from the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO, Kessler et al. 1996) have yielded a wealth of information on the mid-IR spectral signatures of a significant number of optically-identified standard AGN (e.g., Sturm et al. 2002) and starburst galaxies (e.g., Genzel et al. 1998, Thornely et al. 2000), very few mid-IR spectroscopic observations of LINER galaxies have yet been published. Of the few near- and mid-IR spectroscopic observations of LINERs that have been published thus far, almost all are IR-bright and virtually all show low resolution spectra similar to starburst galaxies (e.g., Veilleux, Sanders, & Kim 1999; Lutz et al. 1999). Does this trend extend to all LINER galaxies? Do infrared-bright LINERs represent a ”shock-dominated” subclass of the LINER population powered predominantly by star formation? As an added puzzle, these spectral characteristics are in at least one case irreconcilable with X-ray observations that reveal distinct evidence for a hard radiation field characteristic of an AGN . The optical spectrum of the strongly interacting system NGC 6240 shows LINER-like emission lines and the mid-IR properties show only weak high excitation line emission and an overall spectrum similar to starburst galaxies (Lutz, Veilleux, & Genzel 1999). However, a number of hard X-ray observations of NGC 6240 with XMM, ROSAT, Beppo SAX, and Chandra have detected the presence of a heavily obscured AGN with total intrinsic luminosity in the QSO range (Komossa et al. 2003; Keil, Boller, & Fujimoto 2001; Komossa & Schulz 1999; Vignati et al. 1999, Komossa et al. 2002). If this LINER is indeed powered by an AGN, why does it not display strong high excitation lines at mid-IR wavelengths where dust obscuration is minimal? Other IR-bright LINERs can also host obscured AGN that have thus far been undiscovered in IR surveys of local and future high redshift surveys. In fact, some of the luminous hard X-ray sources recently discovered by deep Chandra surveys have optical and near-IR counterparts that show little or no evidence for AGN activity (eg., Brandt et al. 2001, Barger et al. 2001, Comastri et al. 2002). Many of these objects could be similar to the local LINERs studied here. With the advent of SIRTF, it is critical to determine the origin of these possible multiwavelength inconsistencies.

In this paper, we present a comprehensive comparative high resolution mid-IR spectroscopic and X-ray imaging investigation of all LINERs observed by both ISO and Chandra. The Chandra observations presented here are largely unpublished archival observations of all LINERs observed either by the short wavelength spectrometer (SWS) or the long wavelength spectrometer (LWS) on board ISO. In this paper we present only the SWS observations of all LINERs in the ISO archive, most of which have not previously been published. In a companion paper, our archival far-IR spectroscopic observations of all LINERs are presented (Satyapal & Sanei 2003). This paper is structured as follows. In section 2, we summarize the SWS and Chandra LINER samples. In section 3, we present the observations and data reduction together with a tabulation of all SWS line fluxes, X-ray luminosities, and X-ray morphological class designations. The discussion of our results including a mid-IR spectroscopic and X-ray comparison of LINERs with standard AGN and starbursts is given in section 4, followed by a summary of our main results and conclusion in section 5.

## 2 MID-IR AND X-RAY LINER SAMPLES

### 2.1 SWS LINER Sample

We searched the ISO SWS archive for all galaxies classified as LINER galaxies using the recent compilation of LINERs by Carillo et al. (1999). SWS observations of 28 LINER galaxies were found to exist in the ISO archive. Since most galaxies were observed as part of a random collection of guaranteed- and open-time programs with differing scientific goals, the sample is not complete in any sense. Furthermore the observed wavelength range is not uniform for all galaxies. The galaxies range in distance from 0.8 to 253 Mpc, and span a wide range of infrared luminosities (LFIR = 6.28 $`\times `$ 108 L to 6.53 $`\times `$ 1011 L) , Hubble types, and infrared-to-blue luminosity ratios. In Figure 1, we summarize the basic properties of the SWS LINER sample. The individual galaxies observed are listed in Table 1. Basic galaxy properties were taken from Carillo et al. which were predominantly based on the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED). Distances adopted were based on Hubble constant of H0 = 75 km s-1 Mpc-1 unless otherwise noted.

### 2.2 Chandra LINER Sample

Our sample includes all the LINERs observed by Chandra that were also observed by either the LWS or SWS for which data were available in the public archive up to 2002 November. Again, LINER identifications were based on the LINER catalog compiled by Carillo et al. (1999). Thirty three LINER galaxies observed by the ISO spectrometers exist in the Chandra archive. Of these galaxies, 20 were observed by the SWS and the remaining 13 were observed only by the LWS. The galaxies are mostly nearby, and span a wide range of infrared luminosities, Hubble types, and infrared-to-blue luminosity ratios. In Figure 1, we summarize the main characteristics of our X-ray LINER sample. The individual galaxies observed are included in Table 1. The Chandra observations for several of the galaxies have been published before, including 6 LINERs from the Ho et al. (2001) sample (see Table 3 for references) . In these cases, published values for X-ray luminosities and X-ray morphological class designations, if available, were adopted. X-ray observations of 18 of the LINERs have never been published as of 2003 January, and are presented here for the first time.

## 3 OBSERVATIONS, DATA ANALYSIS, AND RESULTS

### 3.1 SWS Observations and Results

All observations were obtained with the ISO-SWS (de Graauw et al. 1996) using the SWS02 or SWS06 observing modes. The aperture size of the SWS ranges from 14 ” $`\times `$ 20 ” to 20 ” $`\times `$ 33 ” and the spectral resolving power, $`\lambda `$ / $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$$`\lambda `$, is approximately 1500. In each galaxy, between one and nine different spectral lines were observed over the 2.4-45 $`\mu `$m wavelength interval.

The data were reduced with the SWS Interactive Analysis package (Lahius et al. 1998, Wieprecht et al. 1998) using the most recent set of calibration parameters and the ISO Spectral Analysis Package ISAP (Sturm et al. 1998). Dark current subtraction, removal of cosmic ray glitches and noisy detectors, flat-fielding, and separate co-addition of data in each scan direction, was carried out prior to line profile extraction, and flux and uncertainty measurements. In Table 2, we list line fluxes and upper limits for some of the most prominent lines within the SWS wavelength range. In some cases, observations for some of the galaxies exist at wavelengths that do not overlap with observations of any of the other galaxies; these line flux measurements were not included in Table 2. Sample spectra of the high excitation \[OIV\] 25.6 $`\mu `$m spectral line, detected in 11 out of 18 LINERs observed at this wavelength, are shown for all previously unpublished observations in Figure 2.

### 3.2 Chandra Observations and Results

Archival Chandra observations of all LINERs presented in this paper were obtained with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS-S) with the source at the nominal aim point of the S3 CCD. Most observations were carried out using the standard 3.2s frame time, although a few bright targets were observed with shorter frame times. Since many of the targets are nearby with bright nuclear X-ray emission, 10 out of the 33 LINER observations revealed pileup of the central unresolved source. The measured counts per frame rate for the piled-up sources ranged from 0.1 to 0.97, making detailed spectral analyses unfeasible.

The Chandra observations were processed using CIAO v.2.1.2 using the latest calibration files provided by the Chandra X-ray Center (CXC). In Table 3 we list the details of the Chandra observations along with our results; sources affected by pileup are flagged. Our data reduction procedure and analysis follow the treatment described by Ho et al. (2001). The 0.2-8keV energy range was chosen for science analysis. Nuclear count rates from 2-8 keV were extracted from a 2” radius centered on the nucleus. For all galaxies that did not display dominant hard X-ray nuclear sources, the 2 ” aperture was centered on the galaxy’s VLA nucleus, if available, or the 2MASS or optical nucleus. For most sources, the detected counts were insufficient to employ detailed spectral fits. Therefore, the nuclear count rate was converted to 2-10 keV X-ray luminosities assuming an intrinsic power law spectrum with photon index $`\mathrm{\Gamma }`$=1.8 using the Galactic interstellar absorption listed in Table 1. For all observations that have been published as of 2003 January, the published intrinsic X-ray luminosities were always employed. In most cases, these luminosities were taken from Ho et al. 2001, who employed the same method for obtaining intrinsic luminosities as we did. Most of the sources that were effected by pile-up, were also previously published by authors who corrected for its effects. In a few cases (Mrk 273, NGC 6240, NGC 5194), intrinsic absorption is known to significantly affect the intrinsic X-ray luminosities. In these cases, published intrinsic X-ray luminosities obtained from detailed XSPEC fitting correcting for intrinsic absorption were employed. Nuclear luminosities and references for published observations are listed in Table 3.

The X-ray images were classified using the morphological class designations adopted by Ho et al. In their scheme, class (I) objects exhibit a dominant nuclear point source, class (II) objects exhibit multiple off-nuclear point sources of comparable brightness to the nuclear source, class (III) objects reveal a nuclear point source embedded in diffuse emission, and class (IV) objects display no nuclear source. Morphological class designations for all galaxies are listed in Table 3.

## 4 DISCUSSION OF RESULTS

### 4.1 Mid-IR Results: How do LINERs Compare with Starbursts and AGN?

The mid-IR lines observed in our sample of LINERs originate from ions with a wide range of ionization potentials. As has been shown in previous work, AGN show prominent high excitation fine structure line emission but starburst galaxies are characterized by a lower excitation spectra characteristic of HII regions ionized by young stars (e.g., Genzel et al. 1998, Sturm et al. 2002). Of the 28 LINER galaxies, 18 were observed at the wavelength of the \[OIV\] 26 $`\mu `$m (excitation potential = 55 eV) line. This line is not produced in HII regions surrounding young stars, the dominant energy source in starburst galaxies, since even hot massive stars emit very few photons with energy sufficient for the production of \[OIV\]. In Figure 3, we compare the strength of the \[OIV\] emission line relative to the total far-IR luminosity in LINERs, standard optically- identified AGN (Sturm et al. 2002) and the few starburst galaxies that show measurable \[OIV\] 26 $`\mu `$m fluxes (Lutz et al. 1998, Genzel et al. 1998). The far-IR luminosity, a significant fraction of the bolometric luminosity of all of the galaxies plotted in Figure 3, comes from thermally reprocessed radiation from both stars and any possible AGN. Since strong \[OIV\] emission requires the presence of an AGN, galaxies dominated by starbursts should display low L\[OIV\]/LFIR values (e.g., Genzel et al. 1998, Sturm et al. 2002). A compilation of all previously published SWS data of AGN and starburst galaxies (plotted in Figure 3) is given in Tables 4 and 5. Note that most starbursts do not show measurable \[OIV\] fluxes. The origin of the line emission in the few starbursts plotted in Figure 3 is thought to be extended ionizing shocks related to the starburst activity (Lutz et al. 1998), or, in the case of NGC 5253 and II Zw 40, the two starbursts with extreme ratios, photoionization by Wolf-Rayet stars (Schaerer & Stasinska 1999). As can be seen in Figure 3, LINERs show L\[OIV\]/LFIR ratios intermediate between those of the AGN and starburst galaxies. The average L\[OIV\]/LFIR ratios are 4.2$`\times `$10-5, 3.7$`\times `$10-4, 3.4$`\times `$10-3 for starbursts, LINERs, and AGN, respectively.

Figure 4 shows the L\[OIV\]/LFIR ratio as a function of the IRAS F25$`\mu `$m/ F60$`\mu `$m flux ratio. A warm mid-IR color indicates a hotter dust temperature and is a well-known powerful discriminator between AGNs and starforming galaxies (e.g. Miley, Neugebauer, & Soifer 1985; de Grijp, Lub, & Miley 1987, de Grijp et al. 1992). It is clear from Figure 4 that while LINERs generally have higher L\[OIV\]/LFIR ratios compared with starbursts, they have comparable mid-IR colors. None of the LINERs presented here show extreme warm mid-IR colors characteristic of many AGN.

In Figure 5, we plot the ratio of the high to low excitation line flux ratio \[OIV\] 26 $`\mu `$m/\[NeII\] 12.8 $`\mu `$m as a function of the IRAS 25/60 $`\mu `$m color for the 9 LINER galaxies for which observations at the wavelengths of both lines exist. As was first shown by Genzel et al. (1998), AGN show much higher \[OIV\]/\[NeII\] line flux ratios than starbursts. The ionization potential of \[NeII\] is approximately 22 eV compared with 55 eV for \[OIV\]. Unlike the \[OIV\] emission, \[NeII\] emission arises in gas photoionized by both stars and AGN. \[NeII\] emission in AGN narrow line regions is expected to be weak since the Neon is in higher ionization states. In the absence of abundance variations and extreme extinction significant at mid-IR wavelengths, the \[OIV\]/\[NeII\] line flux ratio can be used as a measure of the dominant energy source in the galaxies presented here. We can see from Figure 5 that LINERs show \[OIV\]/\[NeII\] ratios (average$`=`$0.28) intermediate between those of AGN (average$`=`$2.17) and starburst galaxies (average$`=`$0.02). In addition, LINERs show the greatest dispersion in this ratio, possibly supporting the view that LINERs are a mixed bag of objects.

Unfortunately, the sparse spectral emission line data for the LINERs observed by ISO precludes the ability to conduct detailed photoionization modeling of the central excitation source.

### 4.2 X-ray Morphology

X-Ray observations can provide a powerful probe into the nuclei of obscured AGN out to column densities of a few times 1024 cm-2. While young supernova remnants, X-ray binaries, and/or hot diffuse gas from starburst-driven superwinds can contribute to the hard X-ray band, these sources of emission are generally weak and spatially extended. Using Chandra’s high angular resolution (0.5”/pixel), detection of a compact hard X-ray source in these nearby LINERs is highly suggestive of an AGN. Note that for 70% of the sample, 0.5” corresponds to less than 100 pc. Figure 6 shows the distribution of X-ray morphology amongst the sample of LINERS. As can be seen, we detect nuclear point sources morphologically consistent with AGN in approximately 67% of the sample.

In order to explore the characteristics of the IR-bright LINER population, we compared the X-ray morphologies of LINERs with LFIR/LB $`>`$ 1 with those with LFIR/LB $`<`$ 1. As can be seen in Figure 7, most (82%) LINERs that show a single dominant compact X-ray core (class I) are IR-faint. On the other hand, most (64%) LINERs that show scattered X-ray sources (class II) are IR-bright. Several LINERs show hard compact X-ray cores embedded in diffuse soft X-ray emission (class III); virtually all of these LINERs are IR-bright.

These trends of morphological classification with IR-brightness are consistent with expectations. Class II objects are morphologically consistent with starburst galaxies, expected to contain a large population of young stars that heat the dust, as well as a large population of X-ray binaries consistent with an X-ray morphology dominated by scattered discrete sources. Class III objects are very likely objects that contain both dust enshrouded circumnuclear starformation as well as an embedded AGN. Indeed, obscuration of AGN is invariably accompanied by starburst activity in Seyfert 2 galaxies (Maiolino et al. 1995).

### 4.3 Mid-IR/X-ray Comparative Study: Multiwavelength Consistency?

Do multiwavelength diagnostics result in a self-consistent understanding of LINERs? Objects that display strong hard X-ray nuclear point sources should also display high excitation lines in the IR. However, for the few IR-bright LINERs studied in detail at both X-ray and IR wavelengths prior to this work, a conflicting picture emerges. The IR-bright LINERs NGC 6240 and Mrk 273 both show weak \[OIV\] 26 $`\mu `$m emission relative to the emission from lower excitation forbidden lines (Genzel et al. 1998), but both show remarkably luminous hard X-ray nuclear point sources (e.g., Komossa & Shultz 1999, Xia et al. 2002). If these LINERs are indeed powered by AGN, why do they not display strong high excitation lines at mid-IR wavelengths where dust obscuration is minimal? Do other LINERs show similar multiwavlength inconsistencies?

Figure 8 shows the \[OIV\]/\[NeII\] line flux ratio as a function of the hard X-ray to far-IR luminosity ratio for this sample of LINERs compared with those AGN for which both SWS and X-ray observations exist (see Table 5 for references). Like the \[OIV\] emission, the hard X-ray emission is dominated by the AGN. The first thing to note from Figure 8 is that, as expected, the galaxy with the lowest \[OIV\]/\[NeII\] line flux ratio is X-ray weak and morphologically consistent with a starburst in the X-rays (class II object). Galaxies with the highest LX/LFIR ratios, are all morphologically consistent with AGN in the X-rays (class I and III objects). However, there are a few anomalies. NGC 6240 is clearly extremely luminous and morphologically consistent with an AGN in he hard X-rays but, as pointed out by Genzel et al. (1998), the mid-IR emission line ratios do not suggest an energetically-dominant AGN. We note that the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 7469 also shows strong hard X-ray emission from a nuclear point source but an anomalously low \[OIV\]/\[NeII\] line flux ratio. Both galaxies are IR-bright and are known to host vigorous star formation activity (e.g. Genzel et al. 1995, van der Werf et al. 1993). Extinction estimates are insufficient to affect substantially the mid-infrared line ratio suggesting that some other explanation for this apparent multiwavelength inconsistency is required. If the intrinsic spectral energy distribution from the X-ray to UV wavelength band is consistent with a standard AGN in these two galaxies, the emission lines from highly ionized gas should dominate their emission line spectra. In contrast, NGC 404 shows very weak soft X-ray emission consistent with a starburst (see Eracleous et al. 2002) but has the highest \[OIV\]/\[NeII\] ratio of our entire sample. Using IR emission line diagnostics alone, this galaxy would be classified as hosting an energetically-dominant AGN. If the emission lines are produced in photoionized plasma surrounding X-ray binaries, it is indeed surprising that the forbidden line luminosities from the high excitation ions surpass those produced by the AGN plotted in Figure 8. In Figure 9, we plot a similar diagnostic diagram using the \[OIV\] 26 $`\mu `$m / \[SiII\] 34 $`\mu `$m line flux ratio. Since the ionization potential of Silicon is less than that of Hyrdogen, \[SiII\] 34 $`\mu `$m emission can originate from both photoionized and photodissociated gas. Due to the potentially higher importance of partially ionized zones in AGNs compared with starbursts, the diagnostic power of this line ratio is more ambiguous. Nonetheless, it is clear that Figure 9 displays the same trends and anomalies that are seen in Figure 8. We stress that our choice of IR line ratio diagrams is limited by the paucity of data available for LINERs. With the advent of SIRTF, detailed abundance- and extinction-insensitive photoionization modeling of the excitation source in LINERs will for the first time be possible.

### 4.4 Transient Phenomena in LINERs?

The multiwavelength anomalies pointed out above invoke the possibility of transient activity in at least some LINERs. A low X-ray luminosity and a prominent high-excitation forbidden line spectrum could be produced if both phenomena are variable and the ISO and Chandra observations took place on different dates. Similarly, a luminous hard X-ray luminosity morphologically consistent with an AGN could be reconciled with an anemic forbidden line spectrum if the AGN activity is intermittent and the observations were not concurrent. Several LINERs show broad variable Balmer lines (e.g., Storchi-Bergmann, Baldwin, & Wilson 1993, Bowler et al. 1996, Eracleous & Halpern 2001), although variability in the narrow lines has not been seen. X-ray variability on timescales of weeks to several years has also been observed (Terashima et al. 2002). The ISO observations of NGC 404 were obtained during 1998 January, approximately two years prior to the Chandra obserservations. However, NGC 404 was detected in the soft X-rays by ROSAT HRI in 1997 April and found to be weak (Komossa, Bohringer, & Huchra 1999). An upper limit by ASCA in 1997 July also indicates that it was X-ray weak in the hard band indicating that X-ray variability between the dates of the ISO and Chandra observations is unlikely. Similarly, prior to the recent detection of the binary AGN in NGC 6240 by Chandra (Komossa et al. 2003), the presence of a highly absorbed extremely X-ray luminous AGN was indicated (e.g., Vignati et al. 1999). In addition, the apparent deficit of emission lines from ionized gas implied by the ISO spectrum was also indicated by the low hydrogen recombination line fluxes observed from NGC 6240 more than a decade ago (e.g., DePoy, Becklin, & Wynn-Williams 1986; Thronson et al. 1990; van der Werf et al. 1993). It is therefore highly unlikely that the multiwavelength anomalies in these galaxies can be explained by variability.

### 4.5  Constraints on the Intrinsic Spectral Energy Distribution in LINERs: A UV Deficit?

A luminous hard X-ray luminosity morphologically consistent with an AGN in concert with weak forbidden and recombination lines invites the possibility that the intrinsic spectral energy distribution (SED) in at least some LINERs is different than that of standard AGN. Previous observations of the continuum emission in several low luminosity LINER galaxies reveal that the observed SEDs from the nuclear source lacks the standard ”big blue bump” in the UV, a feature normally associated with emission from a standard optically thick geometrically thin accretion disk (Lasota et al. 1996; Ho 1999). At low accretion rates, the accretion is thought to take place via advection-dominated accretion flows (ADAFs; Narayan & Yi 1994, 1995). Since ADAFs are radiatively inefficient in the production of UV photons, this scenario was suggested by Ho (1999) as the explanation for the UV photon deficit in the LINER SEDs.

However, recent observations of a few galaxies that show LINER-like optical spectra suggest alternative scenarios. For example, detailed photoionization modeling of the LINER-like optical emission lines in the weak line radio galaxy NGC 4261 require a substantially stronger ionizing UV continuum than is observed. This suggests that the intrinsic SED in this galaxy is similar to standard AGN and the observed UV deficiency in the continuum is a result of substantial extinction along our line of sight to the nucleus. This is supported by recent XMM and Chandra studies that reveal absorption of NH $``$ 1022cm-2 towards the nucleus (Sambruna et al. 2003; Gliozzi et al. 2003). Furthermore, The variablity trends in NGC 4261 are very similar to the standard disk-corona system of Seyferts, which may suggest that the X-ray continuum is not likely to originate in an ADAF (Gliozzi et al. 2003). In this section, we investigate the intrinsic SEDs of our sample of LINERs implied by our IR emission line observations.

The infrared emission lines presented here are powerful probes of the intrinsic ionizing radiation field as seen by the narrow line region. Unlike optical emission lines, these lines are less sensitive to extinction. Figure 10 shows the \[OIV\] 26 $`\mu `$m luminosity versus the hard X-ray luminosity for all LINERs and standard AGN. According to Ho (1999), the UV band is exceptionally dim relative to both the optical and X-ray bands for seven low luminosity LINERs including NGC 4579, one of the LINERs plotted in Figure 10. However, as can be seen by Figure 10, the correlation between the \[OIV\] 26 $`\mu `$m and hard X-ray emission for virtually all LINERs and AGN strongly suggests a similar intrinsic SED between the UV and X-ray bands. Figure 11 shows the \[NeV\] 14.3 $`\mu `$m / \[OIV\] 26 $`\mu `$m line flux ratio versus the hard X-ray luminosity for LINERs and AGN. The ionization potential of \[NeV\] is 97 eV. Since both lines are produced predominantly by AGN, the line ratio can be used to probe the shape of the ionizing radiation field and ionization parameters characteristic of the narrow line region. As can be seen from Figure 11, the line ratios characteristic of LINERs fall well within the range observed for AGN. In fact, the line ratios do not require low ionization parameters, one of the main hypotheses for the low excitation optical line spectrum in LINERs (Ferland & Netzer 1983; Halpern & Steiner 1983).

In summary, although the data is sparse, our preliminary IR observations suggest that the intrinsic SEDs in LINERs are not necessarily different from those of standard AGN. While NGC 6240, possesses an emission line spectrum in the IR that may suggest a deficit of UV photons, its hard X-ray luminosity is comparable to some of the most luminous AGN and is unlikely to be fueled by the low mass accretion rates thought to be associated with ADAFs. Furthermore, several bona fide Seyfert 1 galaxies also display similar low excitation IR spectra suggesting a common origin for this phenomena. Since the two X-ray luminous galaxies with weak emission lines are both IR luminous, it is very likely that dusty AGN are responsible for their observed characteristics. For example, it is possible that dust absorption of ionizing radiation and subsequent direct conversion to thermal IR radiation is responsible for the weak emission line spectrum from the narrow line regions of some dust-enshrouded AGN (Netzer & Laor 1993). We stress that for a true understanding of the intrinsic SEDs of dusty LINERs, an extensive set of emission lines are required for detailed photoionization models.

## 5 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

We present a comprehensive comparative high resolution mid-IR spectroscopic and X-ray imaging investigation of all LINERs observed by ISO and Chandra. Although the sample is heterogenous and incomplete, this is the first comprehensive study of the mid-infrared fine structure line emission of LINERs. These results have been compared with similar observations of starburst galaxies and AGN. Our main results are summarized below:

1. The high excitation \[OIV\] 26 $`\mu `$m spectral line, generally detected only in active galactic nuclei, was observed in 17 of the LINERs and detected in 11 of these objects.

2. LINERs very clearly fall between starbursts and AGN in their mid-IR fine structure line spectra. They show L\[OIV\]26μm/LFIR and L\[OIV\]26μm / L\[NeII\]12.8μm ratios intermediate between those of AGN and starburst galaxies. In the absence of abundance variations, these ratios are a measure of the dominant energy source in dusty galaxies. The average L\[OIV\]26μm / LFIR ratio is 4.2 $`\times `$ 10-5, 3.7 $`\times `$ 10-4, and 3.4 $`\times `$ 10-3 for starbursts, LINERs, and AGN, respectively. The average L\[OIV\]26μm / L\[NeII\]12.8μm ratio is 0.02, 0.28, and 2.17 for starbursts, LINERs, and AGN, respectively. In addition, LINERs show the greatest dispersion in these ratios, possibly supporting the view that LINERs are a mixed bag of objects.

3. An X-ray morphological study of the 33 LINER galaxies observed by Chandra for which joint ISO comparison data is available has also been conducted. We detect nuclear point sources morphologically consistent with AGN in 67% of the sample. We find that most (82%) LINERs that show a single dominant hard compact X-ray core are IR-faint (LFIR/LB $`<`$ 1). On the other hand, most (64%) LINERs that show scattered X-ray sources are IR-bright. Several LINERs show hard compact X-ray cores embedded in diffuse soft X-ray emission; virtually all of these LINERs are infrared-bright.

4. A comparative X-ray/mid-IR spectroscopic investigation of LINERs reveals some surprising results. Objects that display strong hard nuclear X-ray cores should also display high excitation lines in the IR. However, the galaxy NGC 404 shows weak soft X-ray emission consistent with a starburst but has the highest excitation mid-IR spectrum of our entire sample. Using IR emission line diagnostics, this galaxy would be classified as hosting a dominant AGN. Conversely, the IR luminous LINER NGC 6240 has an extremely luminous binary AGN as revealed by the X-rays but shows weak IR emission lines.

5. Contrary to previous suggestions, a comparison of IR emissions lines with hard X-ray luminosities strongly suggest that the intrinsic SEDs in LINERs are not necessarily different in LINERs compared with standard AGN.

Our joint mid-infrared spectroscopic and X-ray investigation of LINERs provide a sampling of some of the puzzles emerging concerning their central energy sources. We stress that the limited data available at this time precludes detailed photoionization modeling of the central engines. With the advent of SIRTF, and future IR missions such as Herschel and JSWT, such detailed analysis will for the first time be possible.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We are very thankful to John McNulty for his assistance in analyzing the Chandra images. We are also very grateful for the generous help from Jessica Gambill, Mario Gliozzi, Davide Donato, Hana Sanei, and the very helpful suggestions from the referree. This research has made use of the NASA/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. SS gratefully acknowledges financial support from NASA grant NAG5-11432. RMS gratefully acknowledges financial support from NASA LTSA grant NAG5-10708 and from the Clare Boothe Luce Program of the Henry Luce Foundation.


format: text

text:
# Hubble Space Telescope Imaging in the Chandra Deep Field South: III. Quantitative Morphology of the 1 Million Second Chandra Counterparts and Comparison with the Field Population 1footnote 11footnote 1Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-26555.

## 1 Introduction

It is becoming clear that a proper understanding of galaxy formation and evolution must address the role played by the supermassive black holes (SBH) now suspected to be present in most galaxy nuclei (e.g., Magorrian et al. 1998) and responsible for the AGN phenomenon. In the local universe, the importance of the SBH–host-galaxy relationship has been highlighted recently by the tight correlation of SBH mass with the host bulge velocity dispersion (Gebhardt et al. 2000; Ferrarese & Merritt 2000) and concentration index (Graham et al. 2001). It is of great interest to probe the AGN–host-galaxy relationship out to higher redshifts, where, for example, the strong evolution observed at the low end of the AGN luminosity function by ROSAT deep X-ray surveys (Hasinger et al. 1999; Miyaji et al. 2000) has been associated with an increased rate of galaxy interactions and distorted/irregular morphologies in the early universe (Lilly et al. 1998; Abraham et al. 1999).

The recent Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO) Deepest Field surveys have extended the ROSAT results to fainter fluxes and harder X-ray energies (Cowie et al. 2003; Giacconi et al. 2002; Brandt et al. 2001; Hornschemeier et al. 2001; Mushotzky et al. 2000; Tozzi et al. 2001). These studies have also confirmed that the cosmic X-ray background is largely attributable to moderate-luminosity AGN ($`L_X10^{4344}`$ erg s-1) at moderate to high redshifts ($`z0.5`$), many with significant obscuration by the host galaxy. This underscores the desirability of studying the AGN–host connection with samples detected at hard X-ray energies, where there is much less bias against the dust obscuration that segregates AGN into type 1 (unobscured) and type 2 (obscured) in the standard unified model (e.g., Urry & Padovani 1995). Although much has been learned from studies of AGN and their hosts at low redshift, and from comparisons of the evolution of higher-luminosity AGN and field galaxies at high redshifts, the fundamental question of whether nuclear activity drives galaxy evolution, or vice versa, can only be fully addressed by obtaining high-resolution multi-wavelength observations of typical AGN and their hosts over a wide range of redshifts. The combination of Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and CXO deep imaging offers a unique opportunity to satisfy these requirements: the Chandra Deepest Fields contain the requisite large, unbiased sample of distant low- to moderate-luminosity AGN with the high positional accuracy ($`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}5`$) necessary for unambiguous association with their faint host galaxies; subsequent high-resolution HST images of these regions then permit the detailed investigation of their host galaxy morphologies and environments.

To this end, we obtained the first HST imaging within the Chandra Deep Field South (hereafter CDFS; Giacconi et al. 2002): three moderately-deep exposures using the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) in $`V`$ and $`I`$. In Paper I of this series (Schreier et al. 2001), we identified unambiguous HST counterparts for $`>90`$% of the 26 CDFS sources in the initial 300 ksec exposure (Tozzi et al. 2001), and discussed the heterogeneous nature of this population as indicated by the joint X-ray and optical photometry. Paper II (Koekemoer et al. 2002) extended this analysis to the larger population of 40 CDFS sources revealed at the 1 Ms CXO depth, which is still current at the time of this writing. Again we found a $`>90`$% fraction with unambiguous HST counterparts, and the combined X-ray and optical properties of this expanded sample largely reinforced the conclusions of Paper I: the optical counterparts to the X-ray sources are divided into two distinct populations, namely 1) an optically faint group with relatively blue colors, similar to the faint blue field galaxy population, and 2) an optically brighter group, including resolved galaxies with average colors significantly redder than the corresponding bright field galaxy population. The brighter objects comprise a wide range of types, including early and late type galaxies, starbursts, and AGN, most at moderate redshifts ($`z0.4`$–1.0; Szokoly et al., in prep.). The faint blue X-ray population is consistent with expected numbers and characteristics of low- to moderate-luminosity type 2 AGN at the quasar epoch ($`z2`$–3).

In the present paper, we undertake a detailed morphological analysis of the CDFS optical counterparts introduced in Papers I and II. In §2 we review the HST and CXO imaging of the CDFS, introduce the full HST/WFPC2 source list, and review the matching of sources common to both sets of observations. We then present a variety of morphological analyses of the HST data in §3, including isophotal ellipse fitting and point-spread function (PSF) convolved two-dimensional surface-brightness modeling of the CXO counterparts, as well as determinations of asymmetry and concentration indices for the entire HST source list in order to contrast the CXO counterparts with the much more numerous field population in our WFPC2 frames. We discuss the implications of these findings in §4 and conclude in §5. Throughout this paper we adopt a cosmology with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{M}=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$, and $`H_0=70`$ km s-1 Mpc-1.

## 2 Observations and Source Catalogs

In §2.1 and §2.2 we provide a brief summary of the HST and CXO observations used in this study. We refer the reader to Paper II and to Giacconi et al. (2002), respectively, for detailed descriptions of the HST and CXO observations and reduction. In §2.3 we present the combined source catalog from our three HST/WFPC2 fields and summarize the optical–X-ray source matching procedure detailed in Paper II. We conclude this section with the catalog of 37 optical–X-ray associations in these fields, whose HST morphologies and environments we analyse in the following sections.

### 2.1 HST Observations and Reduction

We observed three HST/WFPC2 fields within the CDFS during the period 22–27 July 2000. Each field received 3700s ($`2`$ orbits) exposure in the F606W filter and 5800s ($`3`$ orbits) in the F814W filter. In each filter the exposure time was divided among four pairs of images, arranged in a compact dither pattern with sub-pixel offsets to ameliorate the undersampled HST PSF of the 0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$1/pixel Wide-Field (WF) cameras. We refer the reader to Tables 1 and 3 of Paper II for the specific field coordinates and observation log.

After retrieving the images from the HST Data Archive, we re-calibrated them through the standard pipeline once the most up-to-date calibration reference files for the time of the observations became available. We next registered each set of eight images corresponding to a given field and filter combination via cross-correlation, using tasks in the IRAF/STSDAS dither package. To take advantage of our sub-pixel dithering, we employed the drizzle software (Fruchter & Hook 2001) to combine the images with cosmic-ray rejection onto a 0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$05/pixel grid (half the WF scale) with a pixfrac parameter of 1.0. These drizzled images are shown in Figure 1 of Paper I. The image combination is described in more detail in Paper II.

The zeropoints of the stacked images are $`ZP(F606W)=33.322`$ and $`ZP(F814W)=32.084`$ in the VEGAMAG system, which we adopt throughout this paper when quoting magnitudes or surface brightnesses. The background noise RMS in the WF portions of the images is $`3.1`$ ADU in both F606W and F814W, and in the PC portions is $`8.2`$ ADU in F606W and $`8.6`$ ADU in F814W. For notational convenience, we refer to measurements from the F814W images as “$`I`$” and from the F606W images as “$`V`$”, though we note that the F606W passband is significantly broader and redder than Johnson $`V`$.

### 2.2 CXO Observations

The CDFS (Giacconi et al. 2002, Rosati et al. 2002) comprises a set of 11 CXO/ACIS-I exposures totaling $`942`$ ksec, taken between October 1999 and December 2000 with varying position angle, and centered at $`\alpha =03^\mathrm{h}32^\mathrm{m}28^\mathrm{s}`$, $`\delta =27\mathrm{°}48\mathrm{}30\mathrm{}`$ (J2000) in a region of low Galactic neutral hydrogen column ($`N_{\mathrm{HI}}8\times 10^{19}`$ cm-2) and devoid of bright stars ($`m_V14`$) within 30′. The stacked CDFS image covers $`0.109`$ deg2 and has $`1\mathrm{}`$ resolution near the aimpoint, where the flux limits reach $`5.5\times 10^{17}`$ ergs s-1 cm-2 in the soft band (0.5–2 keV) and $`4.5\times 10^{16}`$ ergs s-1 cm-2 in the hard band (2–10 keV). The CDFS team has identified 346 high-significance point sources across their stacked 1 Ms image (Giacconi et al. 2002), of which 40 fall within the three HST/WFPC2 fields in this study — $`3`$ times the number of Chandra Deep Field North sources appearing in the Hubble Deep Field–North (Brandt et al. 2001). The overdensity of CDFS sources in our three fields is partly by construction, as we chose the WFPC2 aimpoints for a large overlap with the earlier CDFS 300 ksec source list (Tozzi et al. 2001).

### 2.3 WFPC2 Photometry and Source Association

Following the reduction described in Paper I, we used SExtractor (version 2.2.1; Bertin & Arnouts 1996) in multiple-image mode to detect sources from the stacked $`V+I`$ WFPC2 images and perform photometry of these sources on the $`V`$ and $`I`$ frames. Table 1 is the source catalog produced from the HST data, containing all sources detected in the three WFPC2 fields of view, according to the detection criteria discussed in Paper I. The catalog is complete to $`I26.4`$ and $`V27.6`$. In addition to the J2000 coordinates and $`V`$ and $`I`$ magnitudes (SExtractor MAG\_AUTO), we include the SExtractor determinations of half-light radius, $`r_{0.5}`$, and stellarity measure, $`\eta `$, defined such that $`\eta 1`$ for an unresolved surface-brightness profile and $`\eta 0`$ for a resolved profile. We further include each source’s asymmetry ($`A`$) and concentration ($`C`$) indices, to be discussed in §3.3.

We registered each of the three fields independently to the CDFS frame by subtracting the error-weighted median offset of the nearest HST/WFPC2 optical counterpart to each CXO source, typically $`1\mathrm{}`$. After this registration, the RMS of the optical/X-ray offsets is $`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}5`$, consistent with the CXO positional uncertainties (Tozzi et al. 2001). Table 2 lists the 37 X-ray sources found by Giacconi et al. (2002) in the 1 Ms CDFS that were also detected in our WFPC2 observations. We do not list the three additional Giacconi et al. sources in our WPFC2 fields for which we did not detect an optical counterpart within 2″ (see Paper II). Table 2 includes the Giacconi et al. catalog XID number, IAU-format coordinate designation, hard-band (2–10 keV) X-ray flux, and X-ray hardness ratio, defined as $`(HS)/(H+S)`$ where $`H`$ and $`S`$ are the measured counts in the hard and soft (0.5–2 keV) bands, respectively. For convenience, we repeat from Table 1 the $`V`$ and $`I`$ magnitudes and stellarities, and the $`I`$-band half-light radius, concentration index, and asymmetry index. We also tabulate the nuclear-to-total flux ratio, to be discussed in §3.2.

## 3 Morphological Analyses

We performed a number of quantitative analyses of the morphology of the optical galaxies associated with the CDFS X-ray sources. For the brighter resolved sources ($`I<24`$, $`\eta _V<0.5`$), we carried out isophotal fitting (§3.1) and two-dimensional model fitting (§3.2). For all the WFPC2 sources, including those not seen in X-rays, we also measured the asymmetry and concentration indices (§3.3), following the techniques of Conselice, Bershady, & Jangren (2000) and Bershady, Jangren, & Conselice (2000, hereafter BJC00).

### 3.1 Isophote Fitting

We fit surface brightness profiles with the IRAF isophotal analysis package ISOPHOTE, part of STSDAS. The package’s contour fitting task ellipse works from an initial guess for an isophotal ellipse, then steps logarithmically in major axis. At each step it finds the optimal isophotal ellipse center, ellipticity, and positional angle. Prior to the ellipse fitting, we use the task imedit to mask foreground stars, neighboring galaxies, etc., near the galaxies of interest. Such masked pixels are ignored by ellipse. We first construct the $`V`$-band surface brightness profile, then apply those isophotes to the corresponding $`I`$-band image to obtain isophotal colors.

Because the ellipse algorithm averages pixels within an elliptical annulus, it is capable of fitting isophotes out to a surface brightness $`\mu _V25.7`$ mag arcsec-2, well below the RMS noise. Far enough from the galaxy center, the fitting algorithm will ultimately fail to converge, and ellipse enters a non-fitting mode that fixes larger ellipses to be similar to the largest convergent isophote. We generally ran ellipse non-interactively, but in cases where a peculiar galaxy surface brightness profile sent the task into non-fitting mode prematurely, we stepped through the isophote fitting interactively. We show the resulting surface brightness profiles in Figure 1, also including the isophotal color, position angle, and ellipticity as a function of semimajor axis. We have fit the one-dimensional profiles to bulge/disk models using the IRAF task nfit1d to assist in our classification of the optical morphologies (Paper II).

### 3.2 Two-dimensional Profile Fitting

We have fit parametric two-dimensional surface brightness models combining an exponential disk, an $`R^{1/4}`$ bulge, and a point-source nucleus all constrained to a common center. The parameters of the fit are the disk scale-length $`R_d`$, inclination $`i_d`$, and position angle $`\mathrm{PA}_d`$, the bulge effective radius $`R_b`$, ellipticity $`ϵ_b`$, and position angle $`\mathrm{PA}_b`$, the bulge-to-disk flux ratio $`B/D`$, the point-source to total flux ratio $`P/T`$, the total source flux $`T(B+D+P)`$, the coordinates of the profile center, and a uniform background level. We pixellize the intensity distribution given by the above 12 parameters to the same scale as the data (0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$05/pixel), using a 3 times oversampled grid in the central $`11\times 11`$ pixels to maintain accuracy in the presence of steep intensity gradients.

We convolve this model-predicted source image by the WFPC2 PSF at the location of the source. Because there are too few point sources in our images to reliably map the spatially variable WFPC2 PSF with our data, we estimate the PSF appropriate to each CXO counterpart with the help of the Tiny Tim software (v6.0, Krist & Hook 2001). We first generate a 4 times oversampled WFPC2 PSF image with Tiny Tim, which we then convolve with the WFPC2 pixel response function (Gaussian with $`\sigma =0.28`$ pixel; A. Fruchter 2003, private comm.) as this is not automatically done by Tiny Tim for oversampled PSFs. We simulate the effect on the PSF of drizzling with pixfrac=1.0 onto a $`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}05`$/pixel grid by further convolving the oversampled PSF image with the input ($`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}1`$) and output ($`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}05`$) pixels. Finally, we block-average the oversampled PSF up to the desired $`0\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}05`$ pixel-1 scale.

We fit the PSF-convolved model to an image section centered on the source coordinates and extending well beyond the faintest detectable isophote: as small as $`64\times 64`$ pixels ($`3\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}2`$ square) for the $`I22`$ sources, and as large as $`256\times 256`$ pixels (12$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$8 square) for the $`I18`$ edge-on spiral CDFS J033208.6$``$274649. As with the isophote fitting described in §3.1, we mask out neighboring sources, chip edges, etc., and ignore such masked pixels when calculating the goodness of fit. We derive a noise image in this region from the data itself, assuming Poisson statistics. We calculate a figure-of-merit $`\chi ^2(𝐩)`$ for a given parameter set $`𝐩`$ by subtracting the model image from the data, dividing this difference image by the noise image, and summing the squares of the resulting pixel values. This algorithm neglects the small-scale noise correlation introduced into the data by our drizzling procedure, but we expect the effect to be minimal (see also Casertano et al. 2000).

We implement the parameter fitting in IDL, using as inputs: the data image section; the associated RMS noise image; and the PSF image. The fitting proceeds in two stages, starting with a downhill simplex optimization of $`\chi ^2(𝐩)`$ based on the “amoeba” subroutine from Numerical Recipes (Press et al. 1992). In order to minimize our sensitivity to starting values in the optimization, we seed the initial simplex with randomly-generated parameter values spanning the broadest range in the various parameters. In the second stage of the fitting, we try to improve upon the local minimum found in the first stage by using the best-fit parameters as one of the starting points for a further simulated-annealing simplex optimization based on the “amebsa” subroutine from Numerical Recipes (Press et al. 1992).

We extensively tested the fidelity of the model-fitting code with simulated galaxy images matched to the PSF and noise properties of our data, with representative fluxes ($`10^3`$$`10^5`$ counts: $`19.6<I<24.6`$) and scale lengths (3–10 pixels: 0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$15–0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$5), and spanning the full ranges of profile shape parameters. We found that the code performed very well at recovering $`P/T`$ and moderately well at recovering $`B/D`$ for simulated galaxies with $`10^4`$ counts ($`I22.1`$). For example, the code typically recovered $`P`$ in simulated $`I=22.1`$ galaxies to within 10% over the full range of $`P/T`$, and for $`P=0`$ models it typically returned $`3\sigma `$ upper limits of $`P/T1`$% ($`I27.1`$). For fainter simulated galaxies of $`10^3`$ counts ($`I=24.6`$), the signal-to-noise became too poor for adequate model fits. We therefore restrict our discussion of the two-dimensional profile-fitting results to the $`I<23`$ galaxies in our sample, where in particular we have high confidence in the central point-source recovery.

To determine the uncertainty in the best-fit value for the central point-source flux $`P`$, we first define the PSF-weighted chi-square of the best-fit parameter set: $`\chi _{\mathrm{PSF}}^2_{\mathrm{pixels}}\mathrm{PSF}_i\chi _i^2(𝐩_{\mathrm{best}})`$. Starting from the best-fit point-source flux $`P_{\mathrm{best}}`$, we step away from this value with increasing $`\mathrm{\Delta }P`$, at each step carrying out a downhill simplex minimization of all the parameters subject to the constraint $`T\times (P/T)=(P_{\mathrm{best}}+\mathrm{\Delta }P)`$. We continue to increase $`\mathrm{\Delta }P`$ in both directions until reaching the effective $`3\sigma `$ perturbations, $`\mathrm{\Delta }P_{3\sigma }`$, defined according to $`\chi _i^2[𝐩;P=(P_{\mathrm{best}}+\mathrm{\Delta }P_{3\sigma })]=\chi _i^2(𝐩_{\mathrm{best}})+9\chi _{\mathrm{PSF}}^2`$. We have adopted this more conservative approach to estimating the errors on the point-source component because the $`\chi ^2`$/pixel in the immediate vicinity of the galaxy core is often much larger than the mean $`\chi ^2`$/pixel across the entire comparison region. If this procedure indicates that $`P=0`$ is not excluded at $`>3\sigma `$, we quote a $`3\sigma `$ upper-limit to the galaxy’s point-source component in Table 2. Otherwise we quote $`P_{\mathrm{best}}`$ with its $`\pm 1\sigma `$ errors.

### 3.3 Asymmetry and Concentration Indices

We measure an asymmetry index $`A`$ of all WFPC2 sources (both X-ray counterparts and X-ray undetected field sources) in the three fields following the prescription of Conselice et al. (2000), which we summarize here. For each source, we determine its half-light radius $`r_{0.5}`$ using SExtractor. We then extract the square image section $`S`$ centered on the source with sides of length $`6r_{0.5}`$. We rotate $`S`$ by $`180\mathrm{°}`$ to obtain the comparison image $`S_{180}`$. The asymmetry index is then calculated according to the formula

$$A=\mathrm{min}\left(\underset{\mathrm{pix}}{}|SS_{180}|/\underset{\mathrm{pix}}{}|S|\right)A_0,$$

where the summation is over individual pixels, and the minimization is over a fractional-pixel grid (with spacing of 0.2 pixel, or 0$`\stackrel{}{\mathrm{.}}`$01) of possible centers of rotation . We determine the asymmetry zeropoint $`A_0=\mathrm{min}\left(_{\mathrm{pix}}|BB_{180}|/_{\mathrm{pix}}|B|\right)`$ from a fixed large square region $`B`$ of blank sky on the particular chip where the source resides. Because the background noise properties vary between pointings and between the WFs and the PC, we cannot simply use a single $`A_0`$ for all sources.

Sources which happen to fall close to a chip edge, or happen to have a spurious companion very close in projection, will have artificially inflated asymmetry estimates in this prescription. We have modified the asymmetry index code (in IRAF, provided to us by C. Conselice) to correct for the former bias by masking the regions along chip edges where the exposure map falls off. When a source’s image section $`S`$ contains such masked pixels, we exclude those pixels (and their $`180\mathrm{°}`$-rotated counterparts) from the summation above. Fortunately, this chip-edge asymmetry inflation affects only a small fraction of all sources (e.g., two of 37 CXO counterparts: CDFS XIDs 185 and 538), and should not introduce a bias between the asymmetry distributions of CXO and non-CXO sources. We do not attempt to correct the “spurious-companion” bias, because we do not know a priori if two neighboring sources are only close because of projection. As with the chip-edge bias, we do not expect the spurious-companion bias to preferentially affect either CXO or non-CXO sources.

We list the $`I`$-band asymmetry indices of all field sources in Table 1, and list the asymmetries with associated errors (as computed by the Conselice code) for the CXO counterparts in Table 2. We flag with colons the asymmetry indices in Table 2 which are suspect (anomalously large) because of substantial source overlap with a chip boundary (CDFS XIDs 185 and 538) or likely spurious close neighbor (CDFS XID 36). We plot the asymmetries of all sources versus magnitude in Figure 3, denoting the CXO counterparts by large symbols keyed to morphological type as classified in Paper II: E/S0 (circles); S/Irr (squares); unresolved (stars); and indeterminate (triangles). We also plot the median $`A`$ and median uncertainty in $`A`$ for field sources in successive 1-mag bins (crosses with error bars). We see no significant trend in $`A`$ with magnitude, but the typical measurement error becomes substantial ($`0.1`$) by $`I23`$. We therefore restrict our samples to $`I<23`$ when discussing the implications of the asymmetry measurements in §4.3.

We measure the concentration index $`C`$ of all sources in the three fields following the prescription of BJC00. Using SExtractor to measure the radii containing 20% and 80% of each source’s flux ($`r_{0.2}`$ and $`r_{0.8}`$, respectively), we then compute the concentration index as $`C5\mathrm{log}(r_{0.8}/r_{0.2})`$. Given this definition, a pure exponential profile has $`C=2.80`$, while a pure $`R^{1/4}`$ profile has $`C=5.27`$. A Gaussian profile has $`C=2.15`$, and thus an observed PSF-convolved exponential or $`R^{1/4}`$ profile will appear less concentrated than the theoretical values. We list the concentration indices for the individual CXO counterparts in Table 2 and plot the distribution of concentration with magnitude in Figure 4 for both the X-ray counterparts (large symbols) and all the sources in the field (small symbols). We note that the high-asymmetry galaxy CDFSJ033211.0$``$274343 ($`A=0.47`$), which is significantly truncated by a chip edge, is the lone low-concentration outlier among the brighter CXO-detected sources.

Because the SExtractor detection algorithm requires a minimum number of connected pixels above a minimum counts/pixel threshold, sources at the faintest flux levels will be preferentially detected if they have a flatter intensity profile. This detection bias should be reflected in a systematic decline of the mean $`C`$ at the faintest flux levels, which we indeed observe in Figure 4 at $`I23`$–24. When discussing the implications of the concentration measurements in §4.5, we avoid the complications of this detection bias by restricting our analysis to the $`I<24`$ population.

We estimate the error on $`C`$ because of uncertainty in the total flux of the source by measuring the additional two flux-radius ratios $`C_\pm 5\mathrm{log}(r_{0.8(1\pm \sigma _f)}/r_{0.2(1\pm \sigma _f)})`$, where $`\sigma _f`$ is the fractional error on the total flux. The total error on $`C`$ should also include the uncertainty in the two isophotal radii values because of the pixel RMS noise. This error on the flux radii is not reported by SExtractor, and is cumbersome to compute for all sources. However we do not expect this additional uncertainty to greatly exceed our estimate based on $`C_\pm `$. In Figure 4 we plot the median $`C`$ and median uncertainty in $`C`$ for field sources in successive 1-mag bins (crosses with error bars). The uncertainty in $`C`$ is $`0.05`$ for sources with $`I24`$.

## 4 Discussion

### 4.1 Surface Brightness Profile Results for the CXO Counterparts

Examining the isophotal fitting results for the 22 resolved $`I<24`$ CXO counterparts (Fig. 1), we find that about half of the objects have a relatively flat color profile all the way into the nucleus, while a slightly smaller fraction display a nucleus that is at least half a magnitude bluer at its core than the average color across the rest of the galaxy. Three objects display nuclei that are redder by at least half a magnitude than their average global color.

We have searched for correlations between color gradient results and the X-ray properties of the galaxies. The three redder-centered objects appear to have somewhat harder X-ray spectra, while the flat-color objects are softer and in particular include all objects detected solely in the CXO soft band (0.5–2 keV). The bluer-centered objects have hardness ratios that are intermediate in value, covering the entire range from soft to hard. There is also some suggestion that the bluer-centered objects have a slightly higher $`L_X`$ on average than the flat-color and redder-centered objects.

The correlation between higher $`L_X`$ and blue central color gradient is expected since the bluer-centered objects are probably all type 1 AGN and are therefore detected at somewhat higher distances on average. This is confirmed by the optical spectroscopy that we have so far: all 3 of the 8 bluer-centered objects for which we have spectroscopic classifications (Szokoly et al. 2003, in prep.) are type 1’s; all 4 of the spectroscopic classifications available for the 16 flat-color and redder-centered objects suggest that they are type 2’s. Finally, the bluer-centered objects are found mostly in elliptical hosts (according to our morphological classifications), while the flat-centered objects are found in both spiral and elliptical hosts.

### 4.2 The Ratio of Obscured to Unobscured AGN at $`z0.5`$–1

Most of the optically brighter CXO counterparts for which we estimated the nuclear point-source flux (3.2) also have measured redshifts (Szokoly et al., in prep.) which imply $`L_X10^{42.5}`$. Such large X-ray luminosities are associated with AGN or intense starbursts — in either case the X-ray output of the host galaxy is dominated by the nuclear regions. Thus we can use our estimates of the unresolved nuclear flux in the CDFS counterparts to provide a much cleaner investigation of X-ray sources’ $`F_X/F_{\mathrm{opt}}`$. Figure 5 shows two plots of 2–10 keV $`F_X`$ versus $`F_{\mathrm{opt}}`$ for the 1 Ms CDFS sources in our fields: the top panel shows $`F_{\mathrm{opt},\mathrm{tot}}`$ of the entire host (including nucleus), analogous to Figure 8 of Paper I for the 300 ksec CDFS sources; the bottom panel shows $`F_{\mathrm{opt},\mathrm{nuc}}`$ of the counterparts which are either unresolved (filled star symbols) or resolved but with finite unresolved nuclear flux (open star symbols). In the bottom panel, we also pair each $`F_{\mathrm{opt},\mathrm{nuc}}`$ with the corresponding $`F_{\mathrm{opt},\mathrm{tot}}`$ (dotted symbols) for comparison with the top panel. Here and throughout the rest of the discussion, we focus on the $`I`$-band data in preference to the $`V`$-band, since only the former samples rest-frame optical light ($`4000`$Å) at the substantial redshifts ($`z0.5`$–1) of even the brighter resolved CXO counterparts.

It is immediately obvious from Figure 5 that the scatter in $`F_X/F_{\mathrm{opt}}`$ is greatly reduced when considering only the optical flux originating from an unresolved nucleus — most have $`\mathrm{log}(F_X/F_{\mathrm{opt},\mathrm{nuc}})1.1\pm 0.3`$. In particular, we see that the $`F_X/F_{\mathrm{opt},\mathrm{nuc}}`$ values for the resolved CDFS sources are now consistent with the narrow range of $`F_X/F_{\mathrm{opt}}`$ of the several HST-unresolved counterparts — all spectroscopically-confirmed type 1 AGN (Szokoly et al., in prep.). We may therefore infer that we are seeing type 1 AGN in these additional resolved hosts, bringing the total fraction of brighter CDFS counterparts with unobscured AGN to $`50`$%.

Even these brighter optical CDFS counterparts are at substantial distances ($`z0.5`$–1; Szokoly et al., in prep.), yet their type 1 fraction is comparable with recent measures of unbiased AGN samples at lower redshift (Wilkes et al. 2002). The hard-X-ray sensitivity of CXO can detect even highly-obscured AGN ($`N_H10^{24}`$ cm-2) of moderate luminosities ($`L_X10^{42.5}`$ erg s-1) in the 1 Ms CDFS out to $`z1`$, leading us to conclude that our current sample, albeit modest, does not support a steep redshift evolution in the type 2/type 1 ratio as favored by recent AGN synthesis models (e.g., Gilli et al. 2001).

### 4.3 Asymmetry of X-ray Hosts versus Field Galaxies

Having measured the asymmetry and concentration indices of all sources appearing in our three WFPC2 pointings (§3.3), we can make statistical comparisons of these morphological indicators between the CXO-detected and the CXO-undetected sources. Figure 6 shows the cumulative distribution of asymmetry index $`A`$ for the 21 CXO-detected and HST-resolved sources with $`I<23`$ (heavy solid line) and for the remaining 267 galaxies with $`I<23`$ but undetected by CXO. The two distributions are statistically indistinguishable according to the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) test, which gives a 56% probability of the null hypothesis that they are drawn from the same underlying distribution.

Our finding that the brighter resolved CDFS sources, almost all at moderate redshifts $`z0.5`$–1, have a strikingly similar asymmetry distribution to the $`I<23`$ field may be compared with earlier morphological studies of the local AGN population. For example, Corbin (2000) finds that the 45 galaxies in the Seyfert and LINER subsets of the BJC00 sample do not show significant asymmetry index differences compared with the 60 galaxies among the non-active subsets. $`N`$-body simulations of galaxy interactions (Walker, Mihos & Hernquist 1996) suggest that even minor mergers induce sufficient morphological disturbances to be detectable via the asymmetry index up to $`1`$ Gyr after the onset of the merger. On this basis, Corbin (2000) concludes that minor mergers either have no role in the triggering of lower-luminosity AGN, or that the AGN manifests only in the late stages of the mergers — implying that the nuclei in his nearby sample have only been active within the last $`0.1`$ Gyr.

Inasmuch as the hard X-ray sensitivity of the CDFS provides a near-complete census of both obscured and unobscured AGN at $`z1`$ down to modest luminosities, similar to the BJC00 sample, the CDFS counterparts’ unexceptional asymmetries and paucity of obvious merger candidates ($`A>0.35`$; C. Conselice 2003, private comm.) now suggest that very recent merger history is not a good indicator of AGN activity over a substantial range of lookback time. If galaxy mergers are indeed a primary driver of AGN fueling, as has been commonly hypothesized (e.g. Gunn 1979, Dahari 1984, Roos 1985, Taniguchi 1999), then the epoch of AGN activity cannot closely coincide with that of merger-induced morphological disturbance — $`10^9`$ yr.

### 4.4 Companions to X-ray Hosts versus Field Galaxies

As a further check into the merger–AGN connection, we took a census of near neighbors to the CDFS counterparts. In Figure 7 we plot a histogram of the number of $`I<23`$ galaxies appearing within 8″ of the $`I<23`$ CDFS counterparts (heavier solid line). For comparison, we also plot the histogram of $`I<23`$ galaxies appearing within 8″ of the CXO-undetected $`I<23`$ population (lighter solid line). We adopt an angular separation threshold rather than a projected linear distance because we currently lack redshift information for most of the field galaxy control sample. However we note that 8″ corresponds to a narrow range of angular diameter distance, $`50`$–65 kpc, over a broad redshift range $`0.5<z<5`$ in our adopted cosmology. This redshift range includes almost all the CDFS counterparts at $`I<23`$, whose redshift survey is virtually complete (Szokoly et al., in prep.), and presumably the majority of the $`I<23`$ field galaxies. If the $`I<23`$ galaxies were not clustered, an 8″ radius would on average contain 1.1 such objects given their source density over the $`14.7`$ arcmin2 of our three WFPC2 fields. We show the corresponding Poisson distribution in Figure 7 (dotted line) for reference.

Compared with the X-ray-undetected $`I<23`$ population, the CDFS counterparts show an enhancement in the fraction with a single near neighbor and a corresponding deficit of isolated systems; the fraction with multiple companions is almost identical between the two populations. While it is obvious that the near-neighbor frequency histogram (Fig. 7) shows greater discrepancy between the X-ray host and field populations than the asymmetry parameter, nonetheless the $`\chi ^2`$ statistic between the two histograms gives only a modest rejection of the null hypothesis (Prob$`(\chi ^2)=0.019`$) that the nearest-neighbor frequencies are consistent. Larger samples are clearly needed to establish the significance of a bias against isolated CDFS sources (see §5). As the current data do not support a significant enhancement in the fraction of CDFS sources with near neighbors, this reinforces our interpretation from the asymmetry analysis (§4.3) that there is no strong association between low- to moderate-luminosity AGN at moderate redshifts and recent/ongoing merger activity of the host galaxies. Similar conclusions at low redshift have emerged from recent studies of the AGN fractions among close pairs versus the field (Barton, Geller, & Kenyon 2000), and of the companion fractions of AGN versus non-AGN (Schmitt 2001).

### 4.5 Central Concentration of X-ray Hosts versus Field Galaxies

Figure 8 shows the cumulative distribution of concentration index $`C`$ for the 21 CXO-detected and HST-resolved sources with $`I<23`$ (heavier line) and for the remaining 267 galaxies with $`I<23`$ but undetected by CXO (lighter line). In marked contrast to the result for the asymmetry index, the two distributions of $`C`$ are clearly distinct and have a low K-S probability of $`4.3\times 10^6`$ for the null hypothesis.

Even though we have restricted this comparison to the HST-resolved CDFS counterparts, i.e. those whose optical flux is not dominated by the central engine, one may still worry that their concentration indices may be biased by the presence of optical flux from the AGN. Indeed we have found several of the CDFS host galaxies to be best-fit with a nuclear point source comprising $`110`$% of the total flux (Fig. 5).

In theory, our two-dimensional modeling could be used to refine the $`C`$ estimates by removing nuclear point-source bias. For example, one may consider computing $`C`$ from a galaxy image after subtracting the best-fit nuclear point source. The model PSF does not precisely match the shape of the true PSF, however, and scaled PSF subtraction leaves relatively large-amplitude residuals in the host’s central pixels which hamper $`C`$ estimation via SExtractor. Alternately, one may consider computing $`C`$ from a model galaxy image constructed from the other, non-point-source, parameters in the two-dimensional fit. In practice this approach also fails, as our simulations indicate the two-dimensional fitting robustly recovers the point-source flux but not the input bulge and disk shape parameters. Furthermore, a proper comparison with the field control sample in either case would require extending the two-dimensional modeling and “nuclear point-source correction” to the whole population, which is beyond the scope of the current study. Fortunately, our calculations below suggest that any enhancement of $`C`$ from nuclear point-source flux is at most a small fraction of the observed $`C`$ discrepancy (Fig. 8) between CXO hosts and field.

The effect of added point-source flux to a galaxy’s concentration index is not straightforward, since the near-Gaussian HST PSF is significantly less concentrated than an exponential or $`R^{1/4}`$ profile. Small additions of nuclear flux will cause $`C`$ to rise as $`r_{20}`$ shrinks faster than $`r_{80}`$, but when the point-source becomes sufficiently dominant the concentration will peak and then collapse to the lower $`C`$ of the PSF. We have attempted to quantify this effect by creating a suite of model galaxies based on a fiducial galaxy profile typical of our $`I<23`$ CDFS counterparts: a PSF-convolved, $`I=22`$ deVaucouleurs profile with $`R_e=5`$ pixels (0.25″). We then steadily increase the flux fraction in the point-source nucleus, and measure $`C`$ as a function of the point-source fraction.

The result is plotted in Figure 9, where we see that the peak increase of $`C`$ is only $`0.1`$. Over the range corresponding to our measured point-source fractions, the deviation is $`<0.05`$. This is only $`10\%`$ of the discrepancy seen in Figure 8, from which we conclude that the AGN host concentration bias is truly related to differences in the host galaxy structure, and not to the possibility of nuclear point-source flux contribution.

Graham et al. (2001) have found a tight correlation between SBH mass and host galaxy concentration index exists among the nearby galaxy samples which previously established the close correlation between SBH mass and host bulge velocity dispersion (Ferrarese & Merritt 2000, Gebhardt et al. 2000). Although our initial analysis reveals little correlation between $`L_X`$ (as a proxy for SBH mass) and $`C`$ for the $`I<23`$ CDFS host galaxies, it is likely that our sample — almost all with hard X-ray luminosities indicative of AGN ($`L_X>10^{42.5}`$ ergs s-1) — harbor SBHs at the high end of the SBH mass function relative to the X-ray undetected galaxies in our fields. Our WFPC2 findings therefore suggest, for the first time, that the close linkage between SBH mass and host galaxy properties extends to the substantial look-back times ($`z0.51`$) typical of the $`I<23`$ CDFS X-ray sources.

## 5 Summary

The deep fields observed with the Chandra X-ray Observatory have produced the first large uniform catalogs of X-ray sources down to modest AGN luminosities ($`L_X10^{4242.5}`$ erg s-1) at substantial redshift. Given the good hard-X-ray sensitivity of the CDFS observations, this catalog is expected to provide a near-complete census of both obscured and unobscured AGN at $`z1`$, whose redshifts appear to be concentrated in the range $`z0.51`$ (Rosati et al. 2002; Szokoly et al., in prep.). We have presented this first quantitative morphological study of many optical counterparts of these distant AGN based on our deep HST observations of three WFPC2 fields in the CDFS.

We have compared the asymmetry indices of $`I<23`$ AGN hosts with the much larger population of similarly bright X-ray-undetected field galaxies. We find a very good agreement between the asymmetry distributions of the two populations (Fig. 6). Furthermore, the CXO counterparts show only a modest difference from the field population in the frequency of nearby companions (Fig. 7). These findings are similar to studies of comparable low-redshift populations, and now suggest that recent merger history is not a good indicator of AGN activity over a substantial range of lookback time.

Our PSF-convolved two-dimensional profile fitting of the HST-resolved CXO counterparts shows that over a third have significant nuclear point-source emission. The $`F_X/F_{\mathrm{opt}}`$ of these unresolved nuclear sources is consistent with the narrow $`F_X/F_{\mathrm{opt}}`$ range of the several HST-unresolved counterparts (Fig. 8). We therefore infer that the total fraction of $`I<24`$ CDFS counterparts harboring type 1 AGN is $`50`$%, consistent with recent findings for unbiased AGN samples at lower redshift (Wilkes et al. 2002). If the large type 1 fraction inferred from our modest sample were representative of the overall $`z0.5`$–1 AGN population, this would be problematic for recent AGN synthesis models (e.g. Gilli et al. 2001) which favor a sharp rise in the type 2/type 1 ratio out to $`z1`$.

Our comparison of the concentration indices of CXO counterparts with the field reveals a clear bias toward higher $`C`$ among the CXO host galaxies (Fig. 8). This $`5\sigma `$ result does not appear to be an artifact of heightened optical flux from the CDFS hosts’ nuclei, and may represent the first evidence that the locally-observed correlation between SBH mass and host-galaxy properties, including concentration index, is already in place by $`z1`$.

To press upon these results regarding the merger–AGN connection and SBH–host-galaxy connection at moderate- to high-redshift, we are undertaking extensive HST/Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) multicolor imaging of the two Chandra Deepest Fields as part of the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS, Dickinson & Giavalisco 2003). The GOODS data will both increase by $`10`$ times the available number of HST-imaged AGN hosts and comparison field galaxies in CXO $`1`$ Ms fields and also will provide extensive spectroscopic and photometric redshift coverage to complement the ACS morphologies. With $`>400`$ HST counterparts of $`1`$ Ms CXO sources, we will solidly verify the morphological and environmental conclusions we have drawn from the 37 CDFS host galaxies in the present work. Furthermore, the large sample in combination with multicolor imaging and redshift information will allow us to track the evolution of AGN versus non-AGN environment and rest-frame $`B`$ morphology out to $`z1.3`$ (Grogin et al. 2003).

We thank C. Conselice for insightful discussions and for graciously providing his asymmetry-index code for our use. We thank R. Gilli and the anonymous referee for comments which strengthened the manuscript. We gratefully acknowledge the award of HST Director’s Discretionary time in support of this project. We also acknowledge support for this work which was provided by NASA through GO grants GO-08809.01-A and GO-07267.01-A from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by AURA, Inc., under NASA Contract NAS 5-26555.