UNDERSTANDING THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE X-RAY AND WATER MASER EMISSION IN GALAXY CENTERS

Water maser emission at 22 GHz, is the result of natural microwave amplifiers by stimulated emission in water molecules. When detected in galaxy centers, it is millions of times more luminous than that found in regular star forming regions. A fraction of these water megamasers are detected in a disk-like configuration, which makes them extremely valuable for providing direct geometrical distances to galaxies and the most precise and accurate masses of supermassive black holes. Nevertheless, these systems are extremely rare. While the exact mechanism of water maser emission production is not known, there is tentative evidence that the disk masing conditions are associated with accretion of matter onto black holes that are as massive as millions to billions of Suns. These accretion processes are usually detected as active galactic nuclei. Previous studies suggested that megamaser disk emission may be associated with the active galactic nuclei that are heavily obscured by cosmic dust in their host circumnuclear regions, however, the statistics remained low, and the results inconclusive. Our study combines the largest X-ray catalogs publicly available, and thus is able to increase significantly the number statistics necessary to better characterize the connection between water masing activity and the circumnuclear dust absorption and radiation reprocessing in galaxy centers, with the direct consequence of providing better constraints or criteria for more efficient future maser surveys.

Additional Abstract Information

Student(s): Noah Ripchick

Department: Physics and Astronomy

Faculty Advisor: Dr. Anca Constantin

Type: Poster

Year: 2018