Half of the Most Luminous Quasars May Be Obscured: Investigating the Nature of WISE-Selected Hot, Dust-Obscured Galaxies

Understand

The WISE mission has unveiled a rare population of high-redshift ($z=1-4.6$), dusty, hyper-luminous galaxies, with infrared luminosities $L_{\rm IR} > 10^{13}~L_{\odot}$, and sometimes exceeding $10^{14}~L_{\odot}$.

• Previous work has shown that their dust temperatures and overall far-IR SEDs are significantly hotter than expected for star-formation.
• We present here an analysis of the rest-frame optical through mid-IR SEDs for a large sample of these so-called "Hot, Dust-Obscured Galaxies" (Hot DOGs).
• We find that the SEDs of Hot DOGs are generally well modeled by the combination of a luminous, yet obscured AGN that dominates the rest-frame emission at $\lambda > 1\mu\rm m$ and the bolometric luminosity output, and a less luminous host galaxy that is responsible for the bulk of the rest optical/UV emission.