STRUCTURE AND MORPHOLOGY OF X-RAY-SELECTED ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS HOSTS AT 1 < z < 3 IN THE CANDELS-COSMOS FIELD
Journal article, 2014

We analyze morphologies of the host galaxies of 35 X-ray-selected active galactic nuclei (AGNs) at z similar to 2 in the Cosmic Evolution Survey field using Hubble Space Telescope/WFC3 imaging taken from the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey. We build a control sample of 350 galaxies in total by selecting 10 non-active galaxies drawn from the same field with a similar stellar mass and redshift for each AGN host. By performing two-dimensional fitting with GALFIT on the surface brightness profile, we find that the distribution of the Sersic index (n) of AGN hosts does not show a statistical difference from that of the control sample. We measure the nonparametric morphological parameters (the asymmetry index A, the Gini coefficient G, the concentration index C, and the M-20 index) based on point-source-subtracted images. All the distributions of these morphological parameters of AGN hosts are consistent with those of the control sample. We finally investigate the fraction of distorted morphologies in both samples by visual classification. Only similar to 15% of the AGN hosts have highly distorted morphologies, possibly due to a major merger or interaction. We find there is no significant difference in the distortion fractions between the AGN host sample and control sample. We conclude that the morphologies of X-ray-selected AGN hosts are similar to those of non-active galaxies and most AGN activity is not triggered by a major merger.

galaxies: active

MERGERS

galaxies: high-redshift

galaxies

SUPERMASSIVE BLACK-HOLES

EXTREMELY RED OBJECTS

SIMILAR-TO 2

CLASSIFICATION

CONNECTION

X-rays:

DEEP

AGN

FIELD

GALAXY MORPHOLOGIES

galaxies: structure

EVOLUTION

Author

Lulu Fan

Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics

G. W. Fang

Nanjing University

Dali University

Y. Chen

University of Science and Technology of China

Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati

J. R. Li

Chinese Academy of Sciences

University of Science and Technology of China

X. Y. Lv

University of Science and Technology of China

Chinese Academy of Sciences

Kirsten Kraiberg Knudsen

Chalmers, Earth and Space Sciences, Radio Astronomy and Astrophysics

X. Kong

Chinese Academy of Sciences

University of Science and Technology of China

Astrophysical Journal Letters

2041-8205 (ISSN) 2041-8213 (eISSN)

Vol. 784 1 5- L9

Subject Categories

Astronomy, Astrophysics and Cosmology

Roots

Basic sciences

DOI

10.1088/2041-8205/784/1/l9

More information

Created

10/8/2017