The Intrinsic Eddington Ratio Distribution of Active Galactic Nuclei in Star-forming Galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Abstract

An important question in extragalactic astronomy concerns the distribution of black hole accretion rates of active galactic nuclei (AGN). Based on observations at X-ray wavelengths, the observed Eddington ratio distribution appears as a power law, while optical studies have often yielded a lognormal distribution. There is increasing evidence that these observed discrepancies may be due to contamination by star formation and other selection effects. Using a sample of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7, we test if an intrinsic Eddington ratio distribution that takes the form of a Schechter function is consistent with previous work that suggests that young galaxies in optical surveys have an observed lognormal Eddington ratio distribution. We simulate the optical emission line properties of a population of galaxies and AGN using a broad instantaneous luminosity distribution described by a Schechter function near the Eddington limit. This simulated AGN population is then compared to observed galaxies via the positions on an emission line excitation diagram and Eddington ratio distributions. We present an improved method for extracting the AGN distribution using BPT diagnostics that allows us to probe over one order of magnitude lower in Eddington ratio counteracting the effects of dilution by star formation. We conclude that for optically selected AGN in young galaxies, the intrinsic Eddington ratio distribution is consistent with a possibly universal, broad power law with an exponential cutoff, as this distribution is observed in old optically selected galaxies and in X-rays.

12 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (16)

• The Host Galaxies and Classification of Active Galactic Nuclei
• UV Star Formation Rates in the Local Universe
• Biases in Virial Black Hole Masses: An SDSS Perspective
• Mid-Infrared Spectral Diagnosis of Submillimeter Galaxies
• The Mean Star Formation Rate of X-ray selected Active Galaxies and its Evolution from z=2.5: Results from PEP-Herschel
• The Current Status of Galaxy Formation
• Optical spectroscopy and X-ray detections of a sample of quasars and AGN selected in the mid-infrared from two Spitzer wide-area surveys
• Quasars Are Not Light-Bulbs: Testing Models of Quasar Lifetimes with the Observed Eddington Ratio Distribution
• Black hole in the West Nucleus of Arp 220
• NuSTAR and XMM-Newton Observations of Luminous, Heavily Obscured, WISE-Selected Quasars at z ~ 2
• Growing black holes and galaxies: black hole accretion versus star formation rate
• Eddington ratios of faint AGN at intermediate redshift: Evidence for a population of half-starved black holes
• AGN Feedback models: Correlations with star formation and observational implications of time evolution
• Resolved Star Formation on Sub-galactic Scales in a Merger at z=1.7
• Comparing Simple Quasar Demographics Models
• Aperture Effects on Spectroscopic Galaxy Activity Classification

Cited by in corpus (53)

• Active Galactic Nuclei: what's in a name?
• Prospects for Fundamental Physics with LISA
• Observational Constraints on Black Hole Spin
• X-rays across the galaxy population - II. The distribution of AGN accretion rates as a function of stellar mass and redshift
• X-rays across the galaxy population I: tracing the main sequence of star formation
• A Review of Recent Observations of Galactic Winds Driven by Star Formation
• Linking black-hole growth with host galaxies: The accretion-stellar mass relation and its cosmic evolution
• The MIXR sample: AGN activity versus star formation across the cross-correlation of WISE, 3XMM, and FIRST/NVSS
• H-AMR: A New GPU-accelerated GRMHD Code for Exascale Computing With 3D Adaptive Mesh Refinement and Local Adaptive Time-stepping
• Flickering AGN can explain the strong circumgalactic O VI observed by COS-Halos
• Black-Hole Growth is Mainly Linked to Host-Galaxy Stellar Mass rather than Star Formation Rate
• Delayed or no feedback? - Gas outflows in Type 2 AGNs. III
• Crossing the Line: Active Galactic Nuclei in the Star-forming region of the BPT Diagram
• High-redshift galaxies and black holes in the eyes of JWST: a population synthesis model from infrared to X-rays
• AGN-Host Connection at 0.5 < z < 2.5: A rapid evolution of AGN fraction in red galaxies during the last 10 Gyr
• The Chandra Deep Fields: Lifting the Veil on Distant Active Galactic Nuclei and X-Ray Emitting Galaxies
• Composite Spectral Energy Distributions and Infrared-Optical Colors of Type 1 and Type 2 Quasars
• The fraction of AGN in major merger galaxies and its luminosity dependence
• The characteristic halo masses of half-a-million WISE-selected quasars
• AGN and their host galaxies in the local Universe: two mass independent Eddington ratio distribution functions characterize black hole growth
• Galaxy-scale Bars in Late-type Sloan Digital Sky Survey Galaxies Do Not Influence the Average Accretion Rates of Supermassive Black Holes
• The Role of Active Galactic Nuclei in the Quenching of Massive Galaxies in the SQuiGGLE Survey
• Selection bias in dynamically-measured supermassive black hole samples: Scaling relations and correlations between residuals in semi-analytic galaxy formation models
• Dwarf AGNs from Variability for the Origins of Seeds (DAVOS): Intermediate-mass black hole demographics from optical synoptic surveys
• Active Galactic Nuclei from HeII: a more complete census of AGN in SDSS galaxies yields a new population of low-luminosity AGN in highly star-forming galaxies
• A forward modelling approach to AGN variability -- Method description and early applications
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: the difference between ionised gas and stellar velocity dispersions
• Morphology and the Color-Mass Diagram as Clues to Galaxy Evolution at z~1
• Mixing between Seyfert and HII-region excitation in local active galaxies
• Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam View of Quasar Host Galaxies at z < 1
• The Assembly of Black Hole Mass and Luminosity Functions of High-redshift Quasars via Multiple Accretion Episodes
• The halo mass of optically-luminous quasars at z=1-2 measured via gravitational deflection of the cosmic microwave background
• Observational Evidence for a Thick Disk of Dark Molecular Gas in the Outer Galaxy
• The relationship between the incidence of X-ray selected AGN in nearby galaxies and star-formation rate
• A unifying evolutionary framework for infrared-selected obscured and unobscured quasar host haloes
• Do you see what I see? Exploring the consequences of luminosity limits in black hole-galaxy evolution studies
• The Next Generation X-ray Galaxy Survey with eROSITA
• The eROSITA Final Equatorial Depth Survey (eFEDS): the hard X-ray selected sample
• CLEAR: Spatially Resolved Emission Lines and Active Galactic Nuclei at $0.6<z<1.3$
• An X-ray Detection of Star Formation In a Highly Magnified Giant Arc
• The $M-\sigma$ relation between supermassive black holes and their host galaxies
• Revisiting the clustering of narrow-line AGN in the local Universe: Joint dependence on stellar mass and color
• Revealing the differences in the SMBH accretion rate distributions of starburst and non-starburst galaxies
• Evolution of black hole and galaxy growth in a semi-numerical galaxy formation model
• Warm absorbers: supermassive black hole feeding, and Compton-thick AGN
• The Mass Distribution of Quasars in Optical Time-domain Surveys
• The Growth Rate of Supermassive Black Holes and Its Dependence on the Stellar Mass of Galaxies at the Present Epoch
• AGN lifetimes in UV-selected galaxies: a clue to supermassive black hole-host galaxy coevolution
• Physical Models for the Clustering of Obscured and Unobscured Quasars
• Black hole-galaxy co-evolution and the role of feedback
• The Eddington Ratio Distribution of Narrow Line Active Galactic Nuclei
• Physical Drivers of Emission Line Diversity of SDSS Seyfert 2s and LINERs After Removal of Contributions by Star Formation
• Spectroscopic confirmation of dual and offset quasars from the Subaru HSC-SSP program