The Environment of Active Galactic Nuclei in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

By C. J. Miller, Robert Nichol, P. Gomez, Andrew M. Hopkins, Mariangela Bernardi. 2003

223 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present the observed fraction of galaxies with an active galactic nucleus (AGN) as a function of environment in the early data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Using 4921 galaxies in the redshift range 0.05 ≤ z ≤ 0.095 and brighter than M(r*) = -20.0 (or M* + 1.45), we find at least ~20% of these galaxies possess an unambiguous detection of an AGN, but this fraction could be as high as ≃40% after we model the ambiguous emission-line galaxies in our sample. We have studied the environmental dependence of galaxies, using the local galaxy density as determined from the distance to the 10th nearest neighbor. As expected, we observe that the fraction of star-forming galaxies decreases with density, while the fraction of passive galaxies (no emission lines) increases with density. In contrast, the fraction of galaxies with an AGN remains constant from the cores of galaxy clusters to the rarefied field population. We conclude that the presence of an AGN is independent of the disk component of a galaxy. We have extensively tested our results, and they are robust against measurement error, definition of an AGN, aperture bias, stellar absorption, survey geometry, and signal-to-noise ratio. Our observations are consistent with the hypothesis that a supermassive black hole resides in the bulge of all massive galaxies, and ≃40% of these black holes are seen as AGNs in our sample. A high fraction of local galaxies with an AGN suggests either that the mean lifetime of these AGNs is longer than previously thought (i.e., ≥108 yr) or that the AGNs burst more often than expected: ~40 times over the redshift range of our sample.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/eeb76cf426658cad7e2939ed70e028208c869fcb

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Citations in the corpus

Active Galactic Nuclei in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. II. Emission-Line Luminosity Function (2005, background): “Thus, active galaxies in this luminosity range comprise about 19% of all galaxies (Ho et al. 1997b; Miller et al. 2003; Brinchmann et al. 2004).”
The C4 Clustering Algorithm: Clusters of Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2005, background): “…the power of the SDSS spectroscopic data in finding nearby clusters of galaxies, and to advance our understanding of cluster scaling relations and galaxy evolution in dense environments (for which the sample has been used in the studies of Gomez et al. 2003; Miller et al. 2003; Balogh et al. 2004).”
The Bimodal Galaxy Color Distribution: Dependence on Luminosity and Environment (2004, background): “Dressler (1980) was first to show that the fraction of late– type galaxies depends strongly on local galaxy environment, and related trends in SFR have also been observed (e.g. Paper II, Miller et al. 2003).”
Star formation and AGN activity in SDSS cluster galaxies (2009, background): “A previous study by Miller et al. (2003) found no dependence of optical AGN occurrence on environment, presumably because their sample was dominated by weak AGN.”
The Luminosity and Color Dependence of the Galaxy Correlation Function (2004, background): “…properties reveal that star formation rates decrease sharply in high-density environments (Gomez et al. 2003; Kauffmann et al. 2004) and that luminous active galactic nuclei arise in systems with large bulges but relatively low density environments (Miller et al. 2003; Kauffmann et al. 2004).”
Galaxy Zoo: Passive Red Spirals . (2009, background): “AGN fractions in all galaxies have generally been shown to be independent of environment (Miller et al. 2003, Sorrentino, Radovich & Rifatto 2006).”
The Environmental Dependence of Galaxy Properties in the Local Universe: Dependences on Luminosity, Local Density, and System Richness (2004, methodology): “When some of the lines are not available, we make use of the two-line method (Miller et al. 2003).”
GASP. I. Gas Stripping Phenomena in Galaxies with MUSE (2017, result): “…galaxies is especially sensitive to environmental effects, AGN studies as a function of environment are of interest, though they often find contrasting results (Miller et al. 2003; Kauffmann et al. 2004; Martini et al. 2006; Popesso & Biviano 2006; von der Linden et al. 2010; Marziani et al. 2017).”
On the prevalence of radio‐loud active galactic nuclei in brightest cluster galaxies: implications for AGN heating of cooling flows (2006, result): “…of emission-line AGN activity is also true of other cluster galaxies: cluster galaxies as a whole are found to be about 20 per cent less likely to show emission-line AGN activity than all galaxies, consistent with the results of previous studies (e.g. Miller et al. 2003; Kauffmann et al. 2004).”
Galaxy Zoo: a sample of blue early-type galaxies at low redshift (2009, methodology): “We use the main emission lines ([OIII]λ5007, Hβ, Hα, [NII] λ6583, [SII] λ6583, [OI] λ6583) measured from such processed spectra on diagnostic diagrams (Kauffmann et al. 2003; Miller et al. 2003; Kewley et al. 2001, 2006).”
Semi-empirical analysis of Sloan Digital Sky Survey galaxies – II. The bimodality of the galaxy population revisited (2005, methodology): “For instance, galaxies that host active nuclei are also identified if they have only the emission lines of Hα and [N II] measured with 3σ confidence (e.g. Coziol et al. 1998; Miller et al. 2003).”
Active Galactic Nuclei in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. I. Sample Selection (2005, methodology): “There have been several studies identifying AGNs spectroscopically from different subsamples of SDSS galaxies (Kauffmann et al. 2003a; Miller et al. 2003).”
GALAXY PAIRS IN THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY. I. STAR FORMATION, ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS FRACTION, AND THE LUMINOSITY/MASS–METALLICITY RELATION (2008, background): “Extending this work beyond galaxy pairs, Miller et al. (2003), and references therein, found that AGN fraction is also independent of environment in groups and clusters.”
Galaxy ecology: groups and low-density environments in the SDSS and 2dFGRS (2003, methodology): “Here, we will consider the [Nii]λ6583/Hα and [Oiii]/Hβ ratios, using the classification of Miller et al. (2003).”
Nuclear Activity in Nearby Galaxies (2008, result): “Given that LINERs selected from SDSS are highly susceptible to extranuclear contamination, as discussed earlier, it is in fact quite surprising—and perhaps fortuitous—that the detection rates of these objects agree so well between the two surveys.”
Cold Molecular Outflows in the Local Universe and Their Feedback Effect on Galaxies (2018, background): “…sample (≈ 50 per cent) is higher than in other local complete surveys, where about 10– 20 per cent are unambiguously AGN (although the actual number might be anything up to 40 per cent, depending on the AGN luminosity threshold and the selection band) (Maiolino & Rieke 1995; Miller et al. 2003).”
CLUSTERING OF LOW-REDSHIFT (z ⩽ 2.2) QUASARS FROM THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY (2008, background): “This measurement suggests that lower activity AGNs reside in more massive DM haloes than do higher activity AGNs, as L[OIII] provides a good indicator of AGN fueling rate (e.g. Miller et al. 2003; Kauffmann et al. 2003).”
Local supermassive black holes, relics of active galactic nuclei and the X-ray background (2003, background): “More recently, Miller et al. (2003) found from SDSS data that a very high fraction of galaxies host an AGN (∼ 20 − 40”
AGN Host Galaxies at z ~ 0.4-1.3: Bulge-dominated and Lacking Merger-AGN Connection (2005, result): “1.3 z ∼ 0.4 bridges the span of cosmic time between the quasar epoch, where accretion-driven luminosity is dominated by high-mass SMBHs, and the recent-epoch AGN hosts probed by SDSS.”