Genuine Retrieval of the AGN Host Stellar Population (GRAHSP)

Abstract

The assembly and co-evolution of supermassive black holes (SMBH) and their host galaxy stellar population is a key open questions in galaxy evolution. Stellar mass ($M_{\star }$) and star formation rate (SFR), are inferred by modeling the spectral energy distribution (SED). For galaxies triggering SMBH activity, the active galactic nucleus (AGN) contaminates the light at all wavelengths, hampering the inference of galaxy parameters. Incomplete AGN templates can lead to systematic overestimates of the stellar mass, biasing our understanding of AGN-galaxy co-evolution. This challenge has gained further impetus with the advent of sensitive wide-area surveys with millions of luminous AGN, including by eROSITA, Euclid and LSST. We aim to estimate the accuracy and bias of AGN host galaxy parameters and improve upon existing techniques. This work makes two contributions: 1) a new SED fitting code, GRAHSP, with a flexible, empirically motivated AGN model including a power law continuum emission lines, a FeII forest and a flexible infrared torus. We verify that our model reproduces published X-ray to infrared SEDs of AGN to better than 20\% accuracy. A fully Bayesian fit with nested sampling includes uncertainties in the model and the data, making the inference highly robust. 2) we created a benchmark photometric dataset where pure quasars are merged with non-AGN pure galaxies into a hybrid (Chimera) object but with known galaxy and AGN properties. Comparing the true and retrieved $M_{\star }$, SFR and AGN luminosities shows that previous codes systematically over-estimate $M_{\star }$ and SFR by 0.5 dex with a wide scatter of 0.7 dex, at AGN luminosities above 10^44 erg/s. In contrast, GRAHSP shows no bias on $M_{\star }$ and SFR. GRAHSP also estimates more realistic uncertainties. GRAHSP enables characterization of the environmental conditions conducive to black hole growth. (abridged)

published in A&A; The Chimera benchmark is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8431646 and the GRAHSP code is available at: https://github.com/JohannesBuchner/GRAHSP/

References in corpus (56)

• Gaia Data Release 3: Summary of the content and survey properties
• Cosmic Star Formation History
• The UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS)
• The Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) -- Overview
• A Cosmological Framework for the Co-Evolution of Quasars, Supermassive Black Holes, and Elliptical Galaxies: I. Galaxy Mergers & Quasar Activity
• A Catalog of Quasar Properties from SDSS DR7
• A simple model to interpret the ultraviolet, optical and infrared emission from galaxies
• AGN Dusty Tori: I. Handling of Clumpy Media
• The Chandra Deep Field-South Survey: 7 Ms Source Catalogs
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Catalog: Sixteenth Data Release
• Second ROSAT all-sky survey (2RXS) source catalogue
• The WFCAM Science Archive
• CRATES: An All-Sky Survey of Flat-Spectrum Radio Sources
• The XMM-Newton serendipitous survey IX. The fourth XMM-Newton serendipitous source catalogue
• Photometric redshift and classification for the XMM-COSMOS sources
• Absorption Properties and Evolution of Active Galactic Nuclei
• The SRG/eROSITA all-sky survey: First X-ray catalogues and data release of the western Galactic hemisphere
• The eROSITA Final Equatorial Depth Survey (eFEDS): The X-ray catalog
• On the mass-to-light ratio of the local Galactic disc and the optical luminosity of the Galaxy
• The 5th edition of the Roma-BZCAT. A short presentation
• The first XMM-Newton slew survey catalogue: XMMSL1
• X-CIGALE: fitting AGN/galaxy SEDs from X-ray to infrared
• The Multiwavelength Survey by Yale-Chile (MUSYC): Deep Medium-Band optical imaging and high quality 32-band photometric redshifts in the ECDF-S
• Constraining the properties of AGN host galaxies with Spectral Energy Distribution modeling
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): Data Release 4 and the z < 0.1 total and z < 0.08 morphological galaxy stellar mass functions
• Quasar Accretion Disks Are Strongly Inhomogeneous
• Fitting AGN/galaxy X-ray-to-radio SEDs with CIGALE and improvement of the code
• The Art of Measuring Physical Parameters in Galaxies: A Critical Assessment of Spectral Energy Distribution Fitting Techniques
• Nested sampling for physical scientists
• Non-parametric Star Formation History Reconstruction with Gaussian Processes I: Counting Major Episodes of Star Formation
• The characteristic blue spectra of accretion disks in quasars as uncovered in the infrared
• The Chandra COSMOS-Legacy survey: Source X-ray spectral properties
• The eROSITA Final Equatorial-Depth Survey (eFEDS): Identification and characterization of the counterparts to the point-like sources
• X-rays across the galaxy population I: tracing the main sequence of star formation
• Dust-Deficient Palomar-Green Quasars and the Diversity of AGN Intrinsic IR Emission
• The Host-Galaxy Properties of Type 1 Versus Type 2 Active Galactic Nuclei
• AGN Populations in Large Volume X-ray Surveys: Photometric Redshifts and Population Types found in the Stripe 82X Survey
• Evident black hole-bulge coevolution in the distant universe
• Modelling type 1 quasar colours in the era of Rubin and Euclid
• Multi-wavelength properties of Type 1 and Type 2 AGN Host Galaxies in the Chandra-COSMOS Legacy Survey
• The Sizes of Quasar Host Galaxies with the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program
• unTimely: a Full-sky, Time-Domain unWISE Catalog
• Optical/near-infrared selection of red QSOs: Evidence for steep extinction curves towards galactic centers?
• Deep Extragalactic VIsible Legacy Survey (DEVILS): Identification of AGN through SED Fitting and the Evolution of the Bolometric AGN Luminosity Function
• SDSS-IV eBOSS Spectroscopy of X-ray and WISE AGN in Stripe 82X: Overview of the Demographics of X-ray and Mid-Infrared Selected Active Galactic Nuclei
• Galaxy properties of type 1 and 2 X-ray selected AGN and comparison among different classification criteria
• Composite Spectral Energy Distributions and Infrared-Optical Colors of Type 1 and Type 2 Quasars
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): The inferred mass--metallicity relation from z=0 to 3.5 via forensic SED fitting
• Variability-selected active galactic nuclei from supernova search in the Chandra deep field south
• The relation between AGN type and host galaxy properties
• A Catalog of AGN Host Galaxies Observed with HST/ACS: Correlations between Star Formation and AGN Activity
• Host galaxy properties of X-ray AGN in the Local Universe
• XXL-HSC: The link between AGN activity and star formation in the Early Universe ($z⩾3.5$)
• Optical Variability of Infrared Power Law-Selected Galaxies & X-ray Sources in the GOODS-South Field
• The post-Herschel view of intrinsic AGN emission: constructing templates for galaxy and AGN emission at IR wavelengths
• On the intrinsic AGN emission in far-infrared/sub-mm

Cited by in corpus (10)

• SRG/eROSITA No. 5: Discovery of quasi-periodic eruptions every ~3.7 days from a galaxy at z>0.1
• The Average Soft X-ray Spectra of eROSITA Active Galactic Nuclei
• The Success of Optical Variability in Uncovering AGNs in Low-stellar Mass Galaxies
• Modeling Star Formation Histories of Changing-Look AGN Host Galaxies with Prospector
• Retrieving the hot circumgalactic medium physics from the X-ray radial profile from eROSITA with an IlustrisTNG-based forward model
• A new Bowen Fluorescence Flare and Extreme Coronal Line Emitter discovered by SRG/eROSITA
• Variability as a new discovery channel for Intermediate-Mass Black Holes in the Time Domain Era
• Robust AGN and host-galaxy decomposition in optical spectral fitting
• The early Universe with JWST and ALMA
• AGILE: an end-to-end Rubin-LSST simulation of AGNs, galaxies, and stars I. Software description and first data release