(ISAS seminar) Speaker: Daniel Asmus (Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, MPIfR, Bonn, Germany) Title: The mid-infrared properties of local active galactic nuclei Abstract: The local active galactic nuclei (AGN) population enables us to study in detail the structures and radiation processes in the direct environment of the supermassive black holes in galaxy centers and to develop an understanding of the general AGN phenomenon. For this purpose, the first unbiased sample of 104 local AGN has now become available thanks to Swift/BAT observations in the hard X-ray regime. We performed high-angular resolution mid-infrared (MIR) imaging observations of most of these AGN with VLT/VISIR and Gemini/Michelle in order to study the dusty tori in these objects -- a key component in AGN models. At the same time, we obtained similar data of a complementary sample of AGN in the low-luminosity regime. I present the results of both programmes and show that unresolved MIR emission is present in the AGN of both samples, which is consistent with thermal emission from dust in the direct vicinity of the AGN. Furthermore, the MIR emission is strongly correlated with the absorption-corrected 2-10 keV X-ray emission over the whole range of luminosities (10^40 to 10^45 erg/s). These results agree with the standard unification model being valid for all types of

Speaker:    Daniel Asmus (Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie,  
            MPIfR, Bonn, Germany)
Title:      The mid-infrared properties of local active galactic nuclei

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011A%26A...536A..36A