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Subaru Adaptive-optics High-spatial-resolution Infrared K- and L'-band Imaging Search for Deeply Buried Dual AGNs in Merging Galaxies

We present the results of infrared K- (2.2 micron) and L'-band (3.8 micron) high-spatial-resolution (<0.2 arcsec) imaging observations of nearby gas- and dust-rich infrared luminous merging galaxies, assisted by the adaptive optics (AO) system on the Subaru 8.2-m telescope. We investigate the presence and frequency of red K-L' compact sources, which are sensitive indicators of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), including AGNs that are deeply buried in gas and dust. We observed 29 merging systems and confirmed at least one AGN in all but one system. However, luminous dual AGNs were detected in only four of the 29 systems (~14%), despite our method's being sensitive to buried AGNs. For multiple nuclei sources, we compared the estimated AGN luminosities with supermassive black hole (SMBH) masses inferred from large aperture K-band stellar emission photometry in individual nuclei. We found that mass accretion rates onto SMBHs are significantly different among multiple SMBHs, such that larger-mass SMBHs generally show higher mass accretion rates when normalized to SMBH mass. Our results suggest that non-synchronous mass accretion onto SMBHs in gas- and dust-rich infrared luminous merging galaxies hampers the observational detection of kiloparsec-scale multiple active SMBHs. This could explain the significantly smaller detection fraction of kiloparsec-scale dual AGNs when compared with the number expected from simple theoretical predictions. Our results also indicate that mass accretion onto SMBHs is dominated by local conditions, rather than by global galaxy properties, reinforcing the importance of observations to our understanding of how multiple SMBHs are activated and acquire mass in gas- and dust-rich merging galaxies.