# The Close Environment of Seyfert Galaxies and Its Implication for Unification Models

## 1 Introduction

In the eighties it was found that a relatively large fraction of Seyferts had a close companion (Dahari (1984, 1985)), although claims that this excess was due to selection effects were never dismissed (Fuentes-Williams & Stocke (1988)). More recent work revealed significant differences between Seyfert 1 and Seyfert 2 galaxies (Laurikainen et al. (1994)), or at least marginal differences (De Robertis, Yee, & Hayhoe (1998)). In both cases an excess of companions for Seyfert 2 (Sy2) but not for Seyfert 1 (Sy1) with respect to non-active galaxies. However, Rafanelli, Violato, & Baruffolo (1995) also recently, found no significant difference between Sy1 and Sy2. We are left in an uncomfortable situation: the three most recent and comprehensive works provide inconsistent results, probably because data are so that the inherent complexity (and definition ambiguity) of the problem is starting to affect statistical inferences. It is not among the aims of the present paper to toroughly compare all the previous work; this has been been done by Laurikainen & Salo (1995) and by Dultzin-Hacyan et al. (1999). The discrepancy must be however accounted for. In this work we use for the first time complete and correctly defined samples, as well as other important methodological improvements which lead us to confirm the result that it is only Seyfert type 2 galaxies that have excess companions. Actually, there are other indications of intrinsic differences between Sy1 and Sy2 galaxies. It has long been known that Sy1 nuclei reside in earlier morphological type galaxies than Sy2 nuclei. This has recently been confirmed from a refined morphological classification of deep HST images by Malkan, Gorjian, & Tam (1998), along with other morphological differences which they believe to be intrinsic differences in host galaxy properties, and which thus undermine one of the postulates for UM. Dultzin-Hacyan, Masegosa, & Moles (1990) showed that while the mid-infrared ($`25\mu `$m) emission in Sy1 is synchrotron radiation (or dust re-emission of it), in Sy2 it is dust re-emission of starlight (see also Mouri & Taniguchi (1992); Dultzin-Hacyan & Benitez (1994); Gu et al. (1997)). In §2 sample selction is described. The main results are summarized and discussed in §3, in §4 a brief discussion of the results is given and finaly, in §5 possible interpretations are analyzed, and some conclusions are drawn.

## 2 Sample Selection and Analysis

The samples of Seyfert galaxies were compiled from the catalog by Lipovetsky, Neizvestny, & Neizvestnaya (1988). This catalog was compiled on the basis of the Second Byurakan Survey (SBS), which is a survey based solely on the UV excess method. The reason was to avoid the possibility of the inclusion of Seyfert 2 galaxies serendipitously discovered because they belonged to interacting systems (which is the case for some of the galaxies in the catalog by Veron-Cetty & Veron (1991)). The importance of these observational effects were stressed by Marziani (1991), who also revealed a fraction of interacting systems larger for Seyfert 2 than for Seyfert 1.

The present sample consists of 72 Sy1 and 60 Sy2. Both samples are volume limited, and the $`\mathrm{V}/\mathrm{V}_{\mathrm{max}}`$ test assures uniformity – and thus completeness (Schmidt 1976) – to a level of 92%, The redshifts are limited to $`0.007z0.035`$ (Sy1) and to $`0.007z0.020`$ (Sy2), and we selected galaxies with high galactic latitudes, in order to avoid extinction, and confusion due to galactic stars. In past work this has not been properly taken into account. For example, the Laurikainen et al. (1994) sample is biased toward low-galactic latitude objects. In Laurikainen et al. (1994) the sample contains 53 % of Seyfert galaxies at galactic latitude $`\mathrm{b}_{\mathrm{II}}\stackrel{>}{}45^{}`$, while only 27 % are so in the Rafanelli, Violato, & Baruffolo (1995) sample. Including low galactic latitude field produces a bias toward a lower fraction of companion, as detection is more difficult because of confusion and absorption. Even if the bias is equally present in the Seyfert and control samples, a large fraction of low $`\mathrm{b}_{\mathrm{II}}`$ fields may introduce a bias against intrinsic differences between Seyfert and control samples. In this study, we have selected exclusively galaxies with $`\mathrm{b}_{\mathrm{II}}\stackrel{>}{}40^{}`$. Also, rich clusters were avoided.

For the control samples, the above criteria were also imposed. One important methodological improvement of this work is the definition of control samples of non-active galaxies which match the Seyfert galaxies in all respects except that they are not Seyfert. In order to achieve this, two control samples were defined, one for each type of Seyfert galaxies, because both the Hubble type and redshift distributions of the two types of Seyfert galaxies differ. The control samples were obtained from a list of more than 10,000 objects of the CfA catalog (Huchra, Davis, & Latham (1983)). For each control sample we first matched Hubble type distributions by artificialy trimming the sample, then we randomly extracted two subsamples, and proceeded to match redshift distributions. We did not match absolute magnitudes since this would introduce a bias. Matching absolute magnitudes (e.g. De Robertis et al. 1998) may bias the control sample toward intrinsically higher luminosity objects, as the Seyfert galaxies host an active nucleus whose luminosity is expected to be comparable to that of the whole galaxy. We did match the diameters distribution. Seyfert nuclei reside most frequently in giant galaxies. Giant galaxies are relatively rare, and usually “do not come alone”: dwarf galaxies are frequently observed in their immediate surrounding. It is therefore crucial to any statistical study to have a control sample matching not only redshift distributions, but the diameters as well as the morphological type of the Seyfert sample.

The control samples are complete (in volume) to a confidence level of up to 97%. Although the above mentioned similarities were long ago known to be requiered for a proper comparison (Osterbrock 1993), in previous works matching the distributions was impossible to achieve mantaining the same densities, due to the selection of small control samples from nearby galaxies. The search for possible excess of companions within 100 Kpc is inconsistent with the choice of the control sample galaxies in the vicinity of the Seyferts (Rafanelli, Violato, & Baruffolo (1995); Salvato & Rafanelli (1997)). If Seyferts are at, or close to, the center of a region of moderate galaxy density enhancement, “looking around for the closest non-active spiral galaxy” means to move (presumably a few 100 Kpc) away from the enhacement and to select areas wich are systematically of lower density, hence underestimating the fraction of companions for the control sample, and therefore creating a spurious excess for Seyfert galaxies.

The procedure to estimate the foreground/background galaxy contamination is as crucial in this type of statistical work, as is the correct definition of control samples. The fraction of Seyfert galaxies with “physical” companions (proximate in space) is the fraction with companions observed within the given search radius diminished by the fractions of galaxies with an optical companion. As in previous studies, we derived the probability of finding an optical companion within a given search radius from the Poisson distributions.

The use of the Lick counts given by Shane & Wirtanen (1967) to estimate the projection effects can introduce an important bias (as in Rafanelli, Violato, & Baruffolo (1995); Salvato & Rafanelli (1997); see also Laurikainen et al. (1994)). One of the main improvements in this work was the determination of the number density $`\rho `$, that goes into the formula for the predicted number of background galaxies within each area. The determination was made directly from the DSS plates using FOCAS (Faint Object Classification and Analysis System; Jarvis & Tyson (1981)) to count galaxies in regions of one square degree surrounding each galaxy. In this work the background densities between samples are statistically equal (according to a Mann-Whitney’s U test). Data on individual objects and on searched sky fields will be presented in a comprehensive form elsewhere (Krongold et al. 1999, in preparation).

## 3 Results

We identified all galaxies with at least one companion within three times the diameter of the galaxy (3 $`\mathrm{D}_\mathrm{S}`$). The search was performed automatically on the DSS with FOCAS, and was limited to galaxies that could be unambiguously distinguished from stars by the FOCAS algorithm. This procedure reduces to a minimum several bias present in previous works, and discussed in the previous section.

Of 72 Seyfert 1 galaxies $``$ 39 % have one companion vs. $``$ 40 % of the 72 galaxies of the Seyfert 1 control sample. The expected number of optical companions from Poisson statistics is 18 % and 15 % for Seyfert 1 and control sample respectively. If optical companions are subtracted, then the percentage of galaxies with presumably physical companions is $`18`$ and $`19`$ % for the Seyfert and control sample respectively. No significant difference is thus found between the Seyfert 1 and its control sample. It is important to stress that the fraction of control sample galaxies with companions is much higher (a factor $`2`$) than the expectation value from Poisson statistics. Of 60 Seyfert 2 galaxies $``$ 70 % vs 42 % of the control sample show a companion within 3$`\mathrm{D}_\mathrm{S}`$. The percentage expected from Poisson statistics is $``$ 34 % and $``$ 26 % for the Seyfert and comparison sample. Thus a large excess (statistically significant to a confidence level of $``$ 99.5 %) appears to be present for the Seyfert 2 galaxies. Also in the case of the Seyfert 2 and its control sample, the fraction of galaxies with companion found is a factor $``$2 above the expectation value. This is an important results of its own (further discussed in §4), whichs most likely reflects a strongly non-Poissonian distributions of galaxies on scales of $`\stackrel{<}{}100`$ Kpc.

The cumulative distribution for the projected linear distance $`\mathrm{D}_\mathrm{C}`$ (in Kpc) of the first companion is shown in Fig. 1, without correction for optical companions. For these measurements, close companions were re-identified by eye on the DSS field, and measurements of centroid position and of diameters were made on computer screen. We searched for companion galaxies of diameters $`\mathrm{D}_\mathrm{C}`$$`\stackrel{>}{}`$ 4 Kpc (assuming $`\mathrm{H}_0=75\mathrm{k}\mathrm{m}\mathrm{s}^1\mathrm{Mpc}^1`$; this is the limiting diameter that can be resolved on the DSS by eye and by algorithm at reshift z$``$0.030), within a search radius in all cases equal or larger than 100 Kpc of projected linear distance (and in any case $`\stackrel{<}{}`$ 250 Kpc). Above the limiting search radius, we assumed a “non detection”, and a lower limit to the companion distance was set equal to the search radius. At 50 Kpc we get 48% galaxies with companions for Sy1 and 66% for Sy2, frequencies which are close to those obtained with a variable search radius equal to 3 $`\mathrm{D}_\mathrm{S}`$ . The three left panels are for Seyfert 1 and the three panels on the right for Seyfert 2. The uppermost panels show the distribution for all detected galaxies, the middle panel for companion galaxies whose diameter is 10 Kpc $`\stackrel{>}{}`$ $`\mathrm{D}_\mathrm{C}`$$`\stackrel{>}{}`$ 4 Kpc, and the lowermost panel for, large, bright companions ($`\mathrm{D}_\mathrm{C}`$ $`\stackrel{>}{}`$ 10 Kpc). The thin lines show the cumulative, unbinned distributions for Seyferts (filled line) and for control samples (dotted lines). The distributions binned over 20 Kpc is shown up to a projected linear distance of 100 Kpc (i.e., no lower limits are included). The error bars on the binned control sample frequencies were set with a “bootstrap” technique (Efron & Tibshirani (1993)) by randomly resampling the control galaxies into a large number of pseudo-control samples (3000), and by taking an uncertainty equal to twice the standard deviation of the distribution of companion frequency among the pseudo-control samples.

For the binned distribution (thick lines) a marginal statistical difference is present for small companions within 20 Kpc, and for large companions if the search radius is extended up to 100 Kpc. The situation for Seyfert 2 galaxies is markedly different. The unbinned distributions for all galaxies $`\mathrm{D}_\mathrm{C}`$ $`\stackrel{>}{}4`$ Kpc is significantly different (at a 98 % confidence level), while for small companions the distributions are only marginally statistically different. Thus the difference is driven by a higher frequency of close, large companions, as shown by the lowermost panel on the right in Fig. 1. For companions with $`\mathrm{D}_\mathrm{C}`$ $`\stackrel{>}{}`$ 10 Kpc, the difference in the binned distribution is statistically significant up to $``$ 60 Kpc.

Summing up, our analysis shows an excess of bright companions within a search radius of $``$ 60 Kpc (or 3 $`\mathrm{D}_\mathrm{S}`$) for Seyfert 2 but not for Seyfert 1 galaxies, and an excess of galaxies in the close surrounding of both control and Seyfert galaxies with respect to the expectation of Poisson statistics.

## 4 Discussion

All studies based on the DSS (including obviously this one) have limitations intrinsic to the data: on the DSS, there is a bias against low surface brightness galaxies at one end, and against compact galaxies at the other end. To make things worse, several authors applied a “sharp mask” to the data, ignoring the environment beyond a search radius three times the diameter of the Seyfert galaxies, labeling each Seyfert galaxies as “with” or “without” companions actually disregarding the complexity and the richness of fields around several Seyfert galaxies. A search radius of 3 $`\mathrm{D}_\mathrm{S}`$ is variable from object to object: this may introduce an additional bias that is not controlled. In addition, even recent studies have been based on computer-unaided measurements on the plates (Laurikainen et al. (1994)), or worse, on printed enlargements (Rafanelli, Violato, & Baruffolo (1995)).

The use of the Shane & Wirtanen (1967) counts has provided an estimate of the number of optical companions expected by chance alignment with background (or foreground) galaxies. The probability of a chance alignment within a given search radius is assumed to follow a Poisson distribution. However, as clearly shown in this study, the actual distribution of galaxies within 100 Kpc is markedly non-Poissonian: control sample galaxies show a much higher fraction (a factor $``$2) of companions than expecteded solely on the basis of Poisson statistics. This result is especially robust since counts were performed over one square degree around the Seyfert galaxies on the DSS, and is consistent with the observation that, in samples of perturbed and interacting galaxies (like Vorontsov-Velyaminov’s) or galaxy pairs (like Karashentsev’s), the fraction of Seyfert galaxies appears to be comparable or lower than that expected for fields galaxies (see the thorough analaysis in Laurikainen & Salo (1995) for references): clearly only a minority of interacting systems shows Seyfert-type activity. In other words, gravitational interaction may be a sufficient conditions for activity, but it is certainly not a necessary condition.

It is important to stress, that in spite of the above mentioned limitations, the results obtained by both Salvato & Rafanelli (1997), and De Robertis, Hayhoe, & Yee (1998) are not actualy in contradiction with the results of the present work. De Robertis, Hayhoe, & Yee (1998) conclude that “while the companion frequency for Sy2 galaxies is formally higher, the result is not statisticaly significant (though it is in the same sense as Laurikainen & Salo (1995)).” Moreover, they do find that the mean environment of Sy1 is different from that of Sy2 at a grater that 95% confidence level, from spatial covariance amplitude analysis. The marginal statistical significance of the differences found by De Robertis, Hayhoe, & Yee (1998), are in our opinion, just due to small number statistics, as they are confirmed by Laurikainen et al. (1994), and by the present work which avoids several sources of bias.

## 5 Conclusions

We confirm an important, disturbing result: Seyfert 2 galaxies have an excess of nearby companions while Seyfert 1 do not. And if Seyfert 1 do not, what about quasars? The evidence provided till now about the occurrence of quasars in interacting host galaxies is based on studies of a few objects and not statistically significant. We must stress, however, that this study and the previous ones address a small subset of interaction phenomenologies that could give rise to accretion toward a galaxy nucleus: either we are studying bound systems or in a stage in which the two galaxies are sufficently close but not yet merging: evolved mergers can be well classified as isolated galaxies from the DSS, or unbound encounters, with separation $`\stackrel{<}{}100`$ Kpc. In both cases we are considering galaxies whose diameters is $`\stackrel{>}{}`$ 4-5 Kpc: it is not possible to perform a search (with recognition either by eye or by algorithms implemented on a computer) of smaller galaxies up to z$``$ 0.03 without introducing a redshift-dependent bias. Morphological disturbances in the inner galactic disks, which may have been produced in a very close encounter with a small companion, are not detected efficiently on the DSS, and were obviously not looked at. Hyperbolic encounters can have the companion projected further away than the limiting search radius in a time $`\mathrm{t}_{\mathrm{fly}\mathrm{by}}0.9\times 10^8\mathrm{s}_{100\mathrm{K}\mathrm{p}\mathrm{c}}\mathrm{v}_{1000\mathrm{k}\mathrm{m}/\mathrm{s}}`$ yr. The limitation to three diameters, which corresponds to 60–80 Kpc, is likely to be inadequate: the enhancement may be genuinely restricted to $`\stackrel{<}{}`$ 100 Kpc, or may be due to a larger density of galaxies over a larger scale: on scales $``$ 1 Mpc peculiar motions with respect to the Hubble flow are expected to dominate. If we think of the Local Cluster, we realize that a reasonable search radius should be indeed $`\stackrel{>}{}`$ 500 Kpc. Studies with a large search radius ($``$ 500 Kpc) and involving faint companions – which cannot be carried out on photographic material – have yet to be done.

The role of interactions in the induction of nuclear activity is a complex and open issue. It is particularly difficult to disentangle the differences involved in “monster fueling” and/or circumnuclear starburst triggering (see e.g. the recent discussion in De Robertis, Hayhoe, & Yee (1998)). Moles, Marquez, & Perez (1995) investigated all the Seyfert and LINER galaxies with known morphology, and found that they are all in interaction or have non-axisymmetric distortions usually with bars, and/or rings or both. The response to non-axisymmetric perturbations, is also known to be dependent on the buldge-to-disk ratio. And we must remember that Sy1 nuclei tend to reside in earlier Hubble type galaxies thatn Sy2 nuclei, and both types in earlier types than Starburst nuclei (Terlevich, Melnick, & Moles (1987)).

Does the difference between the environment of Seyfert 1 and 2 galaxies revealed in this and in previous studies pose a challenge to unification scheme for Seyfert galaxies? In its simplest form, the answer is yes. A “minimalist” interpretation would require to see Sy2 as obscured Sy1 because of interaction: strong interaction with a comparably sized companion enhances overall star formation, drives molecular gas toward the center of the galaxy, which may in turn obscure the active nucleus’ BLR. If an “obscuring torus scenario” applies, and if sources are observed at random orientation, then almost all interacting Sy2 should be obscured Sy1. This interpretation allows for an observational verification: spectropolarimetry of interacting Sy2 galaxy should reveal a“hidden” BLR in the majority of cases. As only $``$ 1/3 of Sy 1 has a companion, this implies that about 2/3 of Sy1 should be genuinely unobscured objects. An alternative scheme was proposed by Dultzin-Hacyan (1995): radiation due to accretion unto a black hole (BH) decreases, while the relative contribution of a circumnuclear starburst (SB) radiation increases from Seyfert nuclei types 1 to 2. Intermediate types can be obviously explained due to intermediate proportions of these contributions. Statistical studies of the multifrequency emission of Seyferts (Mas-Hesse et al. (1995); Dultzin-Hacyan & Ruano (1996)), independently support this scheme. It is also strongly supported by direct observations which show that Sy2 galaxies have more circumnuclear star-forming regions than Sy1, both in the optical (Gonzalez-Delgado & Perez (1993)), and in the IR (Maiolino & Rieke (1995); Maiolino et al. (1997)). Both alternatives are actualy complemenmtary, since it is the interaction that drives the needed obscuring and/or star-forming material to the nucleus. One thing is clear, these views do not deny the possibility that some, even the majority of Sy2 galaxies are obscured Sy1. But an “only orientation” difference between Seyfert types is not sustainable.

This work was supported by grant IN109896 from DGAPA-UNAM and Italian Ministry for University Research (MURST) under grant Cofin98-02-32