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Lookup NU author(s): Houda Haidar, Dr David RosarioORCiD, Dr Steph CampbellORCiD, Dr Chris HarrisonORCiD, Dr Tiago CostaORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© The Author(s) 2026. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. We present James Webb Space Telescope/Mid-Infrared Instrument imaging of eight nearby active galactic nuclei (AGN) from the GATOS (Galactic Activity, Torus, and Outflow Survey) survey to investigate the physical conditions of extended dust in their narrow-line regions (NLRs). In four galaxies (ESO 428–G14, NGC 4388, NGC 3081, and NGC 5728), we detect spatially resolved dust structures extending ∼100–200 pc along the NLR. In these systems, we find a strong link between the morphology of the dust, the radio ejecta, and the coronal [Sivi] emission, implying that dust carries imprints of the processes shaping the NLR. Using spatially resolved spectral energy distributions, we show that dust in the NLR has systematically steeper slopes than star-forming clumps. This dust emits at temperatures in the range $150 \text{-} 220\, \rm K$, at a distance of ∼150 pc from the nucleus. Using simple models, we show that, even under optimistic assumptions of grain size and AGN luminosity, the excess mid-infrared emission cannot be explained by AGN illumination alone. We interpret this excess heating as in situ. We show that shocks with velocities v shock ∼ 200 - 400 km s-1 in dense gas can close this gap, and in some cases even account for the total observed emission. This, combined with multiple lines of evidence for shocks in these regions, supports a scenario in which shocks not only coexist with dust but may be playing a key role in heating it. Our findings reveal shocks may be an important and previously overlooked driver of extended dust emission in the central hundreds of parsecs in AGN.
Author(s): Haidar H, Rosario DJ, Garcia-Bernete I, Alonso-Herrero A, Audibert A, Campbell S, Harrison CM, Costa T, Munoz LH, Combes F, Rigopoulou D, Ricci C, Almeida CR, Bellocchi E, Boorman P, Bunker A, Davies R, Delaney D, Santos TD, Esposito F, Fawcett VA, Gandhi P, Garcia-Burillo S, Gonzalez-Martin O, Hicks EKS, Honig SF, Labiano A, Levenson NA, Lopez-Rodriguez E, Packham C, Pereira-Santaella M, Riffel RA, Ardila AR, Schneider J, Shimizu TT, Stalevski M, Martin MV, Ward M, Zhang L, Leeds G, Donnan FR
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Year: 2026
Volume: 546
Issue: 4
Print publication date: 01/03/2026
Online publication date: 19/01/2026
Acceptance date: 05/01/2026
Date deposited: 03/03/2026
ISSN (print): 0035-8711
ISSN (electronic): 1365-2966
Publisher: Oxford University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stag069
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stag069
Data Access Statement: All data are publicly available and can be extracted as described in Section 2. The reduced JWST images are available upon request; otherwise can also be extracted from MAST according to Section 2.
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