Accreting supermassive black holes in the COSMOS field and the connection to their host galaxies

By A. Bongiorno, A. Merloni, M. Brusa, B. Magnelli, Mara Salvato, M. Mignoli, G. Zamorani, Fabrizio Fiore, D. Rosario, V. Mainieri and 16 more. 2012

203 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Using the wide multiband photometry available in the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) field, we explore the host galaxy properties of a large sample of active galactic nuclei (AGNs; ∼1700 objects) with Lbol ranging from 1043 to 1047 erg s−1, obtained by combining X-ray and optical spectroscopic selections. Based on a careful study of their spectral energy distributions, which have been parametrized using a two-component (AGN+galaxy) model fit, we have derived dust-corrected rest-frame magnitudes, colours and stellar masses of the obscured and unobscured AGN hosts up to high redshift (). Moreover, for the sample of obscured AGNs, we have also derived reliable star formation rates (SFRs). We find that AGN hosts span a large range of stellar masses and SFRs. No colour-bimodality is seen at any redshift in the AGN hosts, which are found to be mainly massive, red galaxies. Once we have accounted for the colour–mass degeneracy in well-defined mass-matched samples, we find a residual (marginal) enhancement of the incidence of AGNs in redder galaxies with lower specific SFRs. We argue that this result might emerge because of our ability to properly account for AGN light contamination and dust extinction, compared to surveys with a more limited multiwavelength coverage. However, because these colour shifts are relatively small, systematic effects could still be considered responsible for some of the observed trends. Interestingly, we find that the probability for a galaxy to host a black hole that is growing at any given ‘specific accretion rate’ (i.e. the ratio of X-ray luminosity to the host stellar mass) is almost independent of the host galaxy mass, while it decreases as a power law with LX/M*. By analysing the normalization of such a probability distribution, we show how the incidence of AGNs increases with redshift as rapidly as (1 + z)4, which closely resembles the overall evolution of the specific SFR of the entire galaxy population. We provide analytical fitting formulae that describe the probability of a galaxy of any mass (above the completeness limit of the COSMOS) to host an AGN of any given specific accretion rate as a function of redshift. These can be useful tools for theoretical studies of the growing population of black holes within galaxy evolution models. Although AGN activity and star formation in galaxies do appear to have a common triggering mechanism, at least in a statistical sense, within the COSMOS sample, we do not find any conclusive evidence to suggest that AGNs have a powerful influence on the star-forming properties of their host galaxies.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ff13d83f9ff0d4d4a0927b69d03d293a486cf598

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Citations in the corpus

The cosmic evolution of massive black holes in the Horizon-AGN simulation (2016, methodology): “A second comparison we perform is with the distribution of specific BH accretion rate, i.e. BH accretion rate relative to the stellar mass of the host galaxy, as defined by Aird et al. (2012) and Bongiorno et al. (2012): specific BHAR = Lbol 1038 erg s−1 ( 0.002Mgal M )−1 .”
GOODS-HERSCHEL: STAR FORMATION, DUST ATTENUATION, AND THE FIR–RADIO CORRELATION ON THE MAIN SEQUENCE OF STAR-FORMING GALAXIES UP TO z ≃ 4 (2014, background): “In any case, these objects are extremely difficult to deal with in terms of both the photometric redshift derivation and stellar mass estimate (e.g., Salvato et al. 2009; Cisternas et al. 2011; Bongiorno et al. 2012), soit is preferable to remove them from our sample.”
x-cigale: fitting AGN/galaxy SEDs from X-ray to infrared (2020, methodology): “3 left), although galaxy SED contributions might enhance the reddening (e.g. Bongiorno et al. 2012).”
Panchromatic spectral energy distributions of Herschel sources (2013, methodology): “…but simply randomly picked from a grid of values, the torus is effectively fit to the data in a simultane- ous 3-component model (see also Fritz et al. 2006; Berta et al. 2007; Noll et al. 2009; Santini et al. 2012; Lusso et al. 2012; Bongiorno et al. 2012, for alternative implementations).”
The SINS/zC-SINF Survey of z ∼ 2 Galaxy Kinematics: SINFONI Adaptive Optics–assisted Data and Kiloparsec-scale Emission-line Properties (2018, result): “…in AGN fraction with higher galaxy mass is however fully consistent with the trends observed from much larger multiwavelength and spectroscopic surveys at z ∼ 2 (e.g., Reddy et al. 2005; Daddi et al. 2007; Brusa et al. 2009; Hainline et al. 2012; Bongiorno et al. 2012; Mancini et al. 2015).”
EVIDENCE FOR WIDE-SPREAD ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS-DRIVEN OUTFLOWS IN THE MOST MASSIVE z ∼ 1–2 STAR-FORMING GALAXIES (2014, background): “…with previous findings in the literature, although statistical uncertainties are obviously large (e.g., Kauffmann et al. 2003b; Reddy et al. 2005; Papovich et al. 2006; Daddi et al. 2007; Brusa et al. 2009; Xue et al. 2010; Hainline et al. 2012; Bongiorno et al. 2012; Rosario et al. 2013a).”
The Illustris simulation: the evolving population of black holes across cosmic time (2014, methodology): “Current observations probe a too narrow dynamic range in X-ray luminosities to see this correlation, even though it can be inferred if the spectroscopically confirmed COSMOS data (Lusso et al. 2010, 2011; Brusa et al. 2010; Bongiorno et al. 2012) at all redshifts are combined together.”
Active galactic nuclei: what’s in a name? (2017, methodology): “…appears to be due to selection effects: for a fixed Xray flux limit (i.e. a luminosity limit at a given redshift), the probability of detecting a low L/LEdd AGN with a massive BH is significantly higher than a high L/LEdd AGN with a low-mass BH (e.g. Aird et al. 2012; Bongiorno et al. 2012).”
Galaxy Interactions Trigger Rapid Black Hole Growth: an unprecedented view from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey (2017, background): “Previous observations have suggested that the AGN fraction (above some particular threshold in AGN luminosity) rises steeply as a function of stellar mass (e.g., Xue et al. 2010; Aird et al. 2012; Bongiorno et al. 2012; Mullaney et al. 2012).”
A remarkably flat relationship between the average star formation rate and AGN luminosity for distant X-ray AGN. (2015, methodology): “This result agrees with the results of previous studies (e.g. Bongiorno et al. 2012; Harrison et al. 2012; Mullaney et al. 2012a; Lanzuisi et al. 2015).”
THE KMOS3D SURVEY: DESIGN, FIRST RESULTS, AND THE EVOLUTION OF GALAXY KINEMATICS FROM 0.7 ⩽ z ⩽ 2.7 (2014, background): “…at z > 1, particularly on the MS, is expected to be between 5-30% at log(M∗ [M⊙]) ∼ 10 − 12, with the fraction increasing with increasing mass (e.g., Reddy et al. 2005; Daddi et al. 2007b; Brusa et al. 2009; Hainline et al. 2012; Mullaney et al. 2012; Rosario et al. 2012; Bongiorno et al. 2012).”
The incidence of obscuration in active galactic nuclei (2013, methodology): “Here, lacking the data quality sufficient for a proper treatment of partially covered AGN, we compare the 2–10 keV intrinsic luminosity we derived with the MIR luminosity (rest frame 12 μm, measured from the overall optical/NIR SED fit, see Bongiorno et al. 2012).”
THE CHANDRA COSMOS LEGACY SURVEY: OPTICAL/IR IDENTIFICATIONS (2015, background): “…survey (LX >10 44 erg s−1) has been already explored in a series of publication from XMM-COSMOS (e.g. Brusa et al. 2009, 2010, hereafter B10; Allevato et al. 2011; Mainieri et al. 2011; Bongiorno et al. 2012; Lusso et al. 2012, 2013; Merloni et al. 2014; Miyaji et al. 2015 among others).”
STELLAR MASSES FROM THE CANDELS SURVEY: THE GOODS-SOUTH AND UDS FIELDS (2014, background): “We caution that the stellar mass estimate may not recover the true value for bright unobscured AGNs, where ad hoc techniques should be adopted (Merloni et al. 2010; Santini et al. 2012b; Bongiorno et al. 2012).”
Cosmic X-ray surveys of distant active galaxies (2015, methodology): “…of galaxies hosting AGN activity above a fixed X-ray luminosity threshold rises steeply with host-galaxy mass out to at least z ≈ 2–3 (e.g., Bundy et al 2008; Brusa et al 2009b; Xue et al 2010; Georgakakis et al 2011; Bluck et al 2011; Aird et al 2012; Bongiorno et al 2012; Mullaney et al 2012b).”
Clustering of intermediate redshift quasars using the final SDSS III-BOSS sample (2015, result): “…standpoints in previous studies (e.g., Hopkins & Hernquist 2009; Kauffmann & Heckman 2009; Novak, Ostriker & Ciotti 2011; Aird et al. 2012; Bongiorno et al. 2012; Gabor & Bournaud 2013; Hickox et al. 2014; Veale, White & Conroy 2014; Schawinski et al. 2015), which further argues against a…”