Bursty stellar populations and obscured active galactic nuclei in galaxy bulges

By V. Wild, G. Kauffmann, T. Heckman, S. Charlot, Gerard Lemson, J. Brinchmann, T. Reichard, Anna Pasquali MPA-Garching, Jhu, IAP-Paris and 3 more. 2007

158 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigate trends between the recent star formation history and black hole growth in galaxy bulges in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The galaxies lie at 0.01 60%) is contributed by bulges with more moderate recent or ongoing star formation. The strongest accreting black holes reside in bulges with a wide range in recent SFH. We conclude that our results support the popular hypothesis for black hole growth occurring through gas inflow into the central regions of galaxies, foll owed by a starburst and triggering of the AGN. However, while this is a significant pathway for th e growth of black holes, it is not the dominant one in the present-day Universe. More unspectacular processes are apparently responsible for the majority of this growth. In order to arrive at these conclusions we have developed a set of new high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) optical spectral indicators, designed to allow a detailed study of stellar populations which have undergone recent enhanced star formation. Working in the rest-frame wavelength range 3750-4150 ˚ A, ideally suited to many recent and ongoing spectroscopic surveys at low and high redshift, the first two indices are equivalent to the previously well studied 4000 ˚ A break strength and Hδ equivalent width. The primary advantage of this new method is a greatly improved SNR for the latter index, allowing the present study to use spectra with SNR-perpixel as low as 8. The third index measures the excess strength of Ca II (H&K), which is particularly sensitive to the transition of a post-starbur st spectrum from A to F stars, and allows the degeneracy between time of burst and strength of burst to be broken.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/06470a33c4546bf908fa54e9490810227e18f5ba

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. D. M. Alexander
2. P. Hopkins
3. L. Hernquist
4. C. Conroy
5. R. Dav'e
6. R. Somerville
7. P. V. van Dokkum
8. A. Dekel

In Instrumentation

1. P. Hopkins
2. C. Conroy
3. D. M. Alexander
4. L. Hernquist
5. P. V. van Dokkum
6. R. Dav'e
7. A. Dekel
8. R. Somerville

Citations in the corpus

• Observational evidence for AGN feedback in early-type galaxies (2007, background): “…more general terms, the presence of AGN in agreen valleybetween the blue cloud and the red sequence has been discussed in other recent work in the literature (Faber et al. 2005; Kauffmann et al. 2006; Martin et al. 2007; Nandra et al. 2007; Salim et al. 2007; Wild et al. 2007; Graves et al. 2007).”
• Empirical determination of the shape of dust attenuation curves in star-forming galaxies (2011, methodology): “Recent star formation history: we remove all galaxies with post-starburst spectral features using the method of Wild et al. (2007).”
• THE IMPACT OF INTERACTIONS, BARS, BULGES, AND ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI ON STAR FORMATION EFFICIENCY IN LOCAL MASSIVE GALAXIES (2012, methodology): “The luminosity in the [OIII] line, which we correct for extinction following Wild et al. (2007), can be used as a proxy for the black hole accretion rate (Kauffmann et al. 2003a), while the black hole mass is proportional to σ4 (Tremaine et al. 2002).”
• The Coevolution of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes: Insights from Surveys of the Contemporary Universe (2014, methodology): “This issue was examined in more detail by Wild et al. (2007).”
• The mean star formation rate of X-ray selected active galaxies and its evolution from z~2.5: results from PEP-Herschel (2012, background): “Post-starburst spectroscopic signatures are also found to be strong in AGN hosts (Wild et al. 2007), while there is evidence in some AGNs that nuclear activity follows a few 100 Myr after a strong starburst (Davies et al. 2007; Wild et al. 2010).”
• What drives the growth of black holes (2011, background): “The scatter decreases when the star-formation rate is measured over < 1 kpc scales (e.g., Wild et al., 2007; Diamond-Stanic & Rieke, 2011), and is predicted to decrease yet further at smaller spatial scales, where a causal connection is expected between the gas that drives star formation and the…”
• What controls star formation in the central 500 pc of the Galaxy (2013, methodology): “…particular attention to spectral features that signify a starburst 50–100 Myr ago with no recent star formation, such as strong Balmer absorption lines and weak nebular emission lines (which is relatively straightforward using fiber spectra from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, see Wild et al. 2007).”
• Modelling and interpreting spectral energy distributions of galaxies with BEAGLE (2016, methodology): “We parametrize this model in terms of the total Vband attenuation optical depth, τ̂V = τ̂BCV + τ̂ ISMV , and the fraction of this arising from dust in the ambient ISM, μ = τ̂ ISMV /τ̂V , which is typically constrained in the range [0.3, 0.5] (e.g. Wild et al. 2007).”
• Post-starburst galaxies: more than just an interesting curiosity (2008, methodology): “Following the method of Wild et al. (2007), we employ a PCA of the spectra around the 4000 Å break to measure the strength of the Balmer lines with sufficient SNR.”
• HST WFC3/IR OBSERVATIONS OF ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS HOST GALAXIES AT z ∼ 2: SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES GROW IN DISK GALAXIES (2010, background): “…in a specific time window after a rapidly suppressed burst of star formation that was induced by a merger event (Schawinski et al. 2007, 2010a,b; Wild et al. 2007; Constantin et al. 2008), while black hole growth in latetype galaxies, which dominates active galactic nucleus (AGN) host galaxy…”
• DUST-CORRECTED STAR FORMATION RATES OF GALAXIES. I. COMBINATIONS OF Hα AND INFRARED TRACERS (2009, methodology): “It is also notable that other widely adopted schemes such as the modified Charlot–Fall attenuation law (Wild et al. 2007; da Cunha et al. 2008) produce attenuations that are within 0.1 mag on average of those derived here.”
• Star formation and AGN activity in SDSS cluster galaxies (2009, methodology): “Traditionally, the Balmer absorption line strength is quantified as the s rength of the Hδ line - the great advantage of the new index is that it can be applied to spectra with considerably lower SNR than requid for measuring Hδ (Wild et al. 2007).”
• Fitting the integrated spectral energy distributions of galaxies (2010, background): “On the other hand, spectra are better at picking up recent bursts through their Balmer lines (e.g. Wild et al. 2007, 2009).”
• ONGOING AND CO-EVOLVING STAR FORMATION IN zCOSMOS GALAXIES HOSTING ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2008, background): “The SDSS has generated an unprecedented sample of galaxies to select large numbers of low redshift (z < 0.3) narrowline AGN (Kauffmann et al. 2003b; Kewley et al. 2006; Stasińska et al. 2006; Heckman et al. 2006; Wild et al. 2007) to cleanly study their host properties.”
• The green valley is a red herring: Galaxy Zoo reveals two evolutionary pathways towards quenching of star formation in early-and late-type galaxies (2014, background): “This is why it has been suggested previously that black hole accretion is correlated with a decline in sSFR (and therefore green colours; e.g. Schawinski et al. 2007b; Nandra et al. 2007; Wild et al. 2007; Silverman et al. 2008).”
• Galaxy Zoo: Disentangling the Environmental Dependence of Morphology and Colour ⋆ (2008, background): “…drive gas towards the center, where it can trigger a burst of star formation and fuel the central black hole, the feedback from which can heat the remaining gas and eventually quench star formation (e.g., Mihos & Hernquist 1996, Wild et al. 2007, Pasquali et al. 2008, Schawinski et al. 2009a).”
• GALAXY ZOO: THE FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT CO-EVOLUTION OF SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES AND THEIR EARLY- AND LATE-TYPE HOST GALAXIES (2010, background): “…host galaxy colors and that they are less common in the blue cloud and the red sequence (e.g., Schawinski et al. 2007; Nandra et al. 2007; Wild et al. 2007; Salim et al. 2007; Constantin et al. 2008; Martin et al. 2007; Georgakakis et al. 2008; Silverman et al. 2008; Schawinski et al.…”