The WISE-2MASS Survey: Red Quasars Into the Radio Quiet Regime

Creators: Glikman, E.; Lacy, M.; LaMassa, S.; Bradley, C.; Djorgovski, S. G.; Urrutia, T.; Gates, E. L.; Graham, M. J.; Urry, M.; Yoon, I.

Abstract

We present a highly complete sample of broad-line (Type 1) QSOs out to z ∼ 3 selected by their mid-infrared colors, a method that is minimally affected by dust reddening. We remove host-galaxy emission from the spectra and fit for excess reddening in the residual QSOs, resulting in a Gaussian distribution of colors for unreddened (blue) QSOs, with a tail extending toward heavily reddened (red) QSOs, defined as having E(B − V) > 0.25. This radio-independent selection method enables us to compare red and blue QSO radio properties in both the FIRST (1.4 GHz) and VLASS (2–4 GHz) surveys. Consistent with recent results from optically selected QSOs from SDSS, we find that red QSOs have a significantly higher detection fraction and a higher fraction of compact radio morphologies at both frequencies. We employ radio stacking to investigate the median radio properties of the QSOs including those that are undetected in FIRST and VLASS, finding that red QSOs have significantly brighter radio emission and steeper radio spectral slopes compared with blue QSOs. Finally, we find that the incidence of red QSOs is strongly luminosity dependent, where red QSOs make up >40% of all QSOs at the highest luminosities. Overall, red QSOs comprise ∼40% of higher luminosity QSOs, dropping to only a few percent at lower luminosities. Furthermore, red QSOs make up a larger percentage of the radio-detected QSO population. We argue that dusty AGN-driven winds are responsible for both the obscuration as well as excess radio emission seen in red QSOs.

Additional Information

© 2022. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. Received 2021 October 13; revised 2022 April 25; accepted 2022 April 27; published 2022 July 29. We thank the anonymous referee for a careful reading of the text and for suggesting revisions and analyses that greatly improved the presentation of the paper. E.G. acknowledges the generous support of the Cottrell Scholar Award through the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. S.G.D. and M.J.G. acknowledge a partial support from the NASA grant 16-ADAP16-0232 and the NSF grants AST-1749235, AST-1815034, and AST-2108402. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. This research made use of the cross-match service provided by CDS, Strasbourg. Research at Lick Observatory is partially supported by a generous gift from Google. This publication makes use of data products from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, which is a joint project of the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This publication makes use of data products from the Two Micron All Sky Survey, which is a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation. Funding for SDSS-III has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. The SDSS-III website is http://www.sdss3.org/. SDSS-III is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions of the SDSS-III Collaboration including the University of Arizona, the Brazilian Participation Group, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Florida, the French Participation Group, the German Participation Group, Harvard University, the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, the Michigan State/Notre Dame/JINA Participation Group, Johns Hopkins University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, New Mexico State University, New York University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, University of Portsmouth, Princeton University, the Spanish Participation Group, University of Tokyo, University of Utah, Vanderbilt University, University of Virginia, University of Washington, and Yale University. Facilities: Palomar - , IRTF - , APO - , LBT - , Lick - Software: Astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013, 2018), IRAF (Tody 1986, 1993), Spextool (Cushing et al. 2004), TOPCAT (Taylor 2005)

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