Mid-IR properties of seyferts: Spitzer IRS spectroscopy of the IRAS 12 μm seyfert sample

We performed an analysis of the mid-infrared properties of the 12μm Seyfert sample, a complete unbiased 12 μm flux limited sample of local Seyfert galaxies selected from the IRAS Faint Source Catalog based on low-resolution spectra obtained with the Infrared Spectrograph (IRS) on-board Spitzer Space Telescope. A detailed presentation of this analysis is discussed by Wu et al. (2009). We find that, on average, the 15-30μm slope of the continuum is 〈σ15-30〉 = - 0.85±0.61 for Seyfert 1s and -1.53±0.84 for Seyfert 2s, and there is substantial scatter in each type. Moreover, nearly 32% of Seyfert 1s, and 9% of Seyfert 2s, display a peak in the mid-infrared spectrum at 20μm, which is attributed to an additional hot dust component. The polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) equivalent width decreases with increasing dust temperature, as indicated by the global infrared color of the host galaxies. However, no statistical difference in PAH equivalent width is detected between the two Seyfert types of the same bolometric luminosity. Finally, we propose a new method to estimate the AGN contribution to the integrated 12 μm galaxy emission, by subtracting the "star formation" component in the Seyfert galaxies, making use of the tight correlation between PAH 11.2 μm luminosity and 12μm luminosity for star forming galaxies. © International Astronomical Union 2010.