Star formation and AGN feedback in the local Universe: Combining LOFAR and MaNGA^⋆

¹ Leiden Observatory, Leiden University, PO Box 9513 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
e-mail: leslie@strw.leidenuniv.nl
² Mount Holyoke College, Department of Astronomy, 50 College St, South Hadley, MA 01075, USA
e-mail: mulca23c@mtholyoke.edu
³ ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D), Australia
⁴ Tuparev Astrotech, 3 Sofiyski Geroi Str, Sofia 1612, Bulgaria
⁵ Astrosysteme Austria, Galgenau 19, 4212 Neumarkt im Mühlkreis, Austria
⁶ Astronomisches Rechen-Institut, Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg, Mönchhofstr. 12-14, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
⁷ INAF – Istituto di Radioastronomia and Italian ALMA Regional Centre, Via Gobetti 101, 40129 Bologna, Italy
⁸ Centre for Astrophysics Research, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield AL10 9AB, UK
⁹ Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of California, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95060, USA
¹⁰ National Centre for Nuclear Research, ul. Hoża 69, 00-681 Warszawa, Poland
¹¹ Aix Marseille Univ. CNRS, CNES, LAM, Marseille, France
¹² INAF-IAPS, Via Fosso del Cavaliere 100, 00133 Roma, Italy
¹³ INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Vicolo dell’Osservatorio 5, 35122 Padova, Italy
¹⁴ Thüringer Landessternwarte (TLS), Sternwarte 5, 07778 Tautenburg, Germany

Received: 13 September 2021
Accepted: 2 June 2022

Abstract

The effect of active galactic nuclei (AGN) on their host galaxies – in particular their levels of star formation – remains one of the key outstanding questions of galaxy evolution. Successful cosmological models of galaxy evolution require a fraction of energy released by an AGN to be redistributed into the interstellar medium to reproduce the observed stellar mass and luminosity function and to prevent the formation of over-massive galaxies. Observations have confirmed that the radio-AGN population is energetically capable of heating and redistributing gas at all phases, however, direct evidence of AGN enhancing or quenching star formation remains rare. With modern, deep radio surveys and large integral field spectroscopy (IFS) surveys, we can detect fainter synchrotron emission from AGN jets and accurately probe the star-forming properties of galaxies, respectively. In this paper, we combine data from the LOw Frequency ARray Two-meter Sky Survey (LoTSS) with data from one of the largest optical IFS surveys, Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA), to probe the star-forming properties of 307 local (z < 0.15) galaxies that host radio-detected AGN (RDAGN). We compare our results to a robust control sample of non-active galaxies that each match the stellar mass, redshift, visual morphology, and inclination of a RDAGN host. We find that RDAGN and control galaxies have broad star-formation rate (SFR) distributions, typically lie below the SFMS, and have negative stellar light-weighted age gradients. These results indicate that AGN selected based on their current activity are not responsible for suppressing their host galaxies’ star formation. Rather, our results support the maintenance mode role that radio AGN are expected to have in the local Universe.