The host galaxies of luminous type 2 AGN at $z\sim$0.3-0.4

Abstract

We study the morphological and structural properties of the host galaxies associated with 57 optically-selected luminous type 2 AGN at $z\sim$0.3-0.4: 16 high-luminosity Seyfert 2 (HLSy2, 8.0$\le$log($L_{[\mathrm{OIII}]}/L_{\odot })<$8.3) and 41 obscured quasars (QSO2, log($L_{[\mathrm{OIII}]}/L_{\odot })\ge$8.3). With this work, the total number of QSO2 at $z<1$ with parametrized galaxies increases from $\sim$35 to 76. Our analysis is based on HST WFPC2 and ACS images that we fit with {\sc GALFIT}. HLSy2 and QSO2 show a wide diversity of galaxy hosts. The main difference lies in the higher incidence of highly-disturbed systems among QSO2. This is consistent with a scenario in which galaxy interactions are the dominant mechanism triggering nuclear activity at the highest AGN power. There is a strong dependence of galaxy properties with AGN power (assuming $L_{[\mathrm{OIII}]}$ is an adequate proxy). The relative contribution of the spheroidal component to the total galaxy light (B/T) increases with $L_{[\mathrm{OIII}]}$. While systems dominated by the spheoridal component spread across the total range of $L_{[\mathrm{OIII}]}$, most disk-dominated galaxies concentrate at log($L_{[\mathrm{OIII}]}/L_{\odot })<$8.6. This is expected if more powerful AGN are powered by more massive black holes which are hosted by more massive bulges or spheroids. The average galaxy sizes ($⟨r_{\mathrm{e}}⟩$) are 5.0$\pm$1.5 kpc for HLSy2 and 3.9$\pm$0.6 kpc for HLSy2 and QSO2 respectively. These are significantly smaller than those found for QSO1 and narrow line radio galaxies at similar $z$. We put the results of our work in context of related studies of AGN with quasar-like luminosities.

arXiv comment23 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (63)

• Astropy: A Community Python Package for Astronomy
• On the variation of the Initial Mass Function
• A Fundamental Relation Between Supermassive Black Holes and Their Host Galaxies
• The Demography of Massive Dark Objects in Galaxy Centres
• The Host Galaxies of AGN
• A Relationship Between Nuclear Black Hole Mass and Galaxy Velocity Dispersion
• Detailed Structural Decomposition of Galaxy Images
• The slope of the black-hole mass versus velocity dispersion correlation
• A Unified, Merger-Driven Model for the Origin of Starbursts, Quasars, the Cosmic X-Ray Background, Supermassive Black Holes and Galaxy Spheroids
• Detailed Decomposition of Galaxy Images. II. Beyond Axisymmetric Models
• The VizieR database of Astronomical Catalogues
• A Cosmological Framework for the Co-Evolution of Quasars, Supermassive Black Holes, and Elliptical Galaxies: I. Galaxy Mergers & Quasar Activity
• Galaxy Zoo : Morphologies derived from visual inspection of galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• The size distribution of galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• A Cosmology Calculator for the World Wide Web
• Present-Day Growth of Black Holes and Bulges: the SDSS Perspective
• The host galaxies of radio-loud AGN: mass dependencies, gas cooling and AGN feedback
• Galaxy Zoo 2: detailed morphological classifications for 304,122 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Structural Properties of Pseudo-Bulges, Classical Bulges and Elliptical Galaxies: an SDSS Perspective
• Hubble Space Telescope Images of a Sample of Twenty Nearby Luminous Quasars
• Quasars, their host galaxies, and their central black holes
• A Catalog of Detailed Visual Morphological Classifications for 14034 Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• On the Estimation of Confidence Intervals for Binomial Population Proportions in Astronomy: The Simplicity and Superiority of the Bayesian Approach
• Size evolution of the most massive galaxies at 1.7<z<3 from GOODS NICMOS survey imaging
• CANDELS: Constraining the AGN-Merger Connection with Host Morphologies at z~2
• The bulk of the black hole growth since z~1 occurs in a secular universe: No major merger-AGN connection
• Optical and Near-Infrared Imaging of the IRAS 1-Jy Sample of Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies: II. The Analysis
• Candidate Type II Quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: I. Selection and Optical Properties of a Sample at 0.3<Z<0.83
• Space density of optically-selected type 2 quasars
• Early-type galaxies in the SDSS. II. Correlations between observables
• GEMS: Galaxy fitting catalogues and testing parametric galaxy fitting codes
• The Millennium Galaxy Catalogue: Bulge/Disc Decomposition of 10095 Nearby Galaxies
• Total Galaxy Magnitudes and Effective Radii from Petrosian Magnitudes and Radii
• Early type galaxies have been the predominant morphological class for massive galaxies since only z~1
• The host galaxies of luminous quasars
• Are luminous radio-loud active galactic nuclei triggered by galaxy interactions?
• A NICMOS imaging study of high-z quasar host galaxies
• Galactic Bulges from HST NICMOS Observations: central galaxian objects, and nuclear profile slopes
• Quasar host galaxy star formation activity from multicolour data
• The effects of seeing on Sersic profiles
• Fueling the AGN
• The importance of galaxy interactions in triggering type II quasar activity
• Size evolution of star-forming galaxies with $2<z<4.5$ in the VIMOS Ultra-Deep Survey
• Decomposition of the Host Galaxies of Active Galactic Nuclei Using Hubble Space Telescope Images
• Survival of the obscuring torus in the most powerful active galactic nuclei
• The Growth of Black Holes: Insights From Obscured Active Galaxies
• The Radio Properties of Type 2 Quasars
• A near-IR study of the host galaxies of 2Jy radio sources at 0.03 < z < 0.5: I - the data
• The host galaxies of luminous radio-quiet quasars
• Obscured and unobscured AGN populations in a hard-X-ray selected sample of the XMDS survey
• Low redshift quasars in the SDSS Stripe 82. The host galaxies
• The cosmic assembly of stellar haloes in massive Early-Type Galaxies
• Hubble Space Telescope Imaging of Post-Starburst Quasars
• Towards a comprehensive picture of powerful quasars, their host galaxies and quasar winds at z ~ 0.5
• VLT-VIMOS integral field spectroscopy of luminous and ultraluminous infrared galaxies III: the atlas of the stellar and ionized gas distribution
• Mergers and interactions in SDSS type 2 quasars at z~0.3-0.4. SDSS J143027.66-005614.8: a case study
• The bulge-disk decomposition of AGN host galaxies
• Young stellar populations in type II quasars: timing the onset of star formation and nuclear activity
• Low redshift quasars in the SDSS Stripe 82. Host galaxy colors and close environment
• Two Pseudobulges in the "Boxy Bulge" Galaxy NGC 5746
• The host galaxies of radio-quiet quasars at 0.5<z<1.0
• On the limits of measuring the bulge and disk properties of local and high-redshift massive galaxies
• Quasars and their host galaxies

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Galaxy interactions are the dominant trigger for local type 2 quasars
• Interacting galaxies in the IllustrisTNG simulations -- IV: Enhanced Supermassive Black Hole Accretion Rates in Post-Merger Galaxies
• A significant excess in major merger rate for AGNs with the highest Eddington ratios at z<0.2
• The Role of Major Mergers and Nuclear Star Formation in Nearby Obscured Quasars
• Do AGN triggering mechanisms vary with radio power? II. The importance of mergers as a function of radio power and optical luminosity
• Do AGN triggering mechanisms vary with radio power? I.Optical morphologies of radio-intermediate HERGs
• Interactions between the large-scale radio structures and the gas in a sample of optically selected type 2 quasars
• QSO2 outflow characterization using data obtained with OSIRIS at the Gran Telescopio Canarias
• Identifying type II quasars at intermediate redshift with few-shot learning photometric classification
• The host galaxy of low-luminosity compact sources
• High-Resolution Radio Observations of Five Optically Selected Type 2 Quasars
• AGN -- host galaxy photometric decomposition using a fast, accurate and precise deep learning approach