The miniJPAS Survey: The radial distribution of star formation rates in faint X-ray active galactic nuclei

¹ Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC), University of Pais Vasco, Manuel Lardizabal Ibilbidea, 4, San Sebastián, Spain
e-mail: remember.tomorrow02@gmail.com
² IKERBASQUE, Basque Foundation for Science, 48013 Bilbao, Spain
³ Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Giessenbachstr. 1, 85748 Garching, Germany
⁴ Observatório do Valongo, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 20080-090 Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
e-mail: aricorte@gmail.com
⁵ Instituto de Fisica, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 21941-972 Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
⁶ Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC), PO Box 3004 18080 Granada, Spain
⁷ Instituto de Fisica de Cantabria (CSIC-Universidad de Cantabria), Avenida de los Castros, 39005 Santander, Spain
⁸ Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia “Augusto Righi”, Università di Bologna, via Gobetti 93/2, 40129 Bologna, Italy
⁹ INAF – Osservatorio di Astrofisica e Scienza dello Spazio di Bologna, via Gobetti 93/3, 40129 Bologna, Italy
¹⁰ Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati, Via Bonomea 265, 34136 Trieste, Italy
¹¹ Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy, Department of Physics, Durham University, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE UK
¹² Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, National Observatory of Athens, V. Paulou & I. Metaxa, 11532 Greece
¹³ School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, SO17 1BJ UK
¹⁴ Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, Calle Vía Látea, s/n, 38205 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
¹⁵ Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna, 38206 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain
¹⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N Charles St., Baltimore, MD, 21218 USA
¹⁷ Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD, 21218 USA
¹⁸ Institut de Física d’Altes Energies (IFAE), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, 08193 Bellaterra, (Barcelona), Spain
¹⁹ Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón (CEFCA), Plaza San Juan 1, 44001 Teruel, Spain
²⁰ College of Astronomy and Space Sciences, University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049 PR China
²¹ INAF – Osservatorio Astrofisico di Torino, Strada Osservatorio 20, 10025 Pino Torinese, Italy
²² Sydney Institute for Astronomy, School of Physics A28, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2006 Australia
²³ Departamento de Física Matemática, Instituto de Física, Universidade de São Paulo, Rua do Matão, 1371, CEP 05508-090 São Paulo, Brazil
²⁴ Observatóio Nacional, Rua General José Cristino, 77, São Cristóvão, 20921-400 Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
²⁵ Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal da Bahia, 40210-340 Salvador, BA, Brazil
²⁶ Universidade de São Paulo, Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas, Rua do Matão, 1226, 05508-090 São Paulo, SP, Brazil
²⁷ Instruments4, 4121 Pembury Place, La Canada Flintridge, CA, 91011 USA
²⁸ University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU, Department of Theoretical Physics, Bilbao, 48080 Spain

Received: 19 January 2024
Accepted: 6 May 2024

Abstract

We study the impact of black hole nuclear activity on both the global and radial star formation rate (SFR) profiles in X-ray-selected active galactic nuclei (AGN) in the field of miniJPAS, the precursor of the much wider J-PAS project. Our sample includes 32 AGN with z < 0.3 detected via the XMM-Newton and Chandra surveys. For comparison, we assembled a control sample of 71 star-forming (SF) galaxies with similar magnitudes, sizes, and redshifts. To derive the global properties of both the AGN and the control SF sample, we used CIGALE to fit the spectral energy distributions derived from the 56 narrowband and 4 broadband filters from miniJPAS. We find that AGN tend to reside in more massive galaxies than their SF counterparts. After matching samples based on stellar mass and comparing their SFRs and specific SFRs (sSFRs), no significant differences appear. This suggests that the presence of AGN does not strongly influence overall star formation. However, when we used miniJPAS as an integral field unit (IFU) to dissect galaxies along their position angle, a different picture emerges. We find that AGN tend to be more centrally concentrated in mass with respect to SF galaxies. Moreover, we find a suppression of the sSFR up to 1R_e and then an enhancement beyond 1R_e, strongly contrasting with the decreasing radial profile of sSFRs in SF galaxies. This could point to an inside-out quenching of AGN host galaxies. Additionally, we examined how the radial profiles of the sSFRs in AGN and SF galaxies depend on galaxy morphology, by dividing our sample into disk-dominated (DD), pseudo-bulge (PB), and bulge-dominated (BD) systems. In DD systems, AGN exhibit a flat sSFR profile in the central regions and enhanced star formation beyond 1R_e, contrasting with SF galaxies. In PB systems, SF galaxies show a decreasing sSFR profile, while AGN hosts exhibit an inside-out quenching scenario. In BD systems, both populations demonstrate consistent flat sSFR profiles. These findings suggest that the reason we do not see differences on a global scale is because star formation is suppressed in the central regions and enhanced in the outer regions of AGN host galaxies. While limited in terms of sample size, this work highlights the potential of the upcoming J-PAS as a wide-field low-resolution IFU for thousands of nearby galaxies and AGN.