Issue |
A&A
Volume 518, July-August 2010
Herschel: the first science highlights
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | L26 | |
Number of page(s) | 5 | |
Section | Letters | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201014606 | |
Published online | 16 July 2010 |
Herschel: the first science highlights
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Star formation in AGN hosts in GOODS-N
L. Shao1 - D. Lutz1 - R. Nordon1 - R. Maiolino2 - D. M. Alexander3 - B. Altieri4 - P. Andreani5,6 - H. Aussel7 - F. E. Bauer8 - S. Berta1 - A. Bongiovanni9,10 - W. N. Brandt11 - M. Brusa1 - A. Cava9,10 - J. Cepa9,10 - A. Cimatti12 - E. Daddi7 - H. Dominguez-Sanchez12 - D. Elbaz7 - N. M. Förster Schreiber1 - N. Geis1 - R. Genzel1 - A. Grazian2 - C. Gruppioni12 - G. Magdis7 - B. Magnelli1 - V. Mainieri5 - A. M. Pérez García9,10 - A. Poglitsch1 - P. Popesso1 - F. Pozzi12 - L. Riguccini7 - G. Rodighiero13 - E. Rovilos1 - A. Saintonge1 - M. Salvato14 - M. Sanchez Portal4 - P. Santini2 - E. Sturm1 - L. J. Tacconi1 - I. Valtchanov4 - M. Wetzstein1 - E. Wieprecht1
1 - MPE, Postfach 1312, 85741 Garching, Germany
2 -
INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, via di Frascati 33,
00040 Monte Porzio Catone, Italy
3 -
Department of Physics, Durham University, South Road,
Durham, DH1 3LE, UK
4 -
European Space Astronomy Centre, Villafranca del Castillo, Spain
5 -
European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Straße 2,
85748 Garching, Germany
6 -
INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste, via Tiepolo 11,
34143 Trieste, Italy
7 -
IRFU/Service d'Astrophysique, Bât.709, CEA-Saclay, 91191
Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France
8 -
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Departamento de
Astronomía y Astrofísica, Casilla 306, Santiago 22, Chile
9 -
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, 38205 La Laguna,
Spain
10 -
Departamento de Astrofísica, Universidad de La Laguna,
Spain
11 -
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, 525 Davey Lab,
Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
12 -
Istituto Nazionale di Astronomia, Osservatorio Astronomico di
Bologna, via Ranzani 1, 40127 Bologna, Italy
13 -
Dipartimento di Astronomia, Universitá di Padova, 35122 Padova,
Italy
14 -
Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik, Boltzmannstraße 2,
85748 Garching, Germany
Received 31 March 2010 / Accepted 13 May 2010
Abstract
Sensitive Herschel far-infrared observations can break
degeneracies that were inherent to previous studies of star formation in high-zAGN hosts. Combining PACS 100 and 160 m observations of the GOODS-N
field with 2 Ms Chandra data, we detect
20% of X-ray AGN
individually at >
.
The host far-infrared luminosity of AGN with
increases
with redshift by an order of magnitude from z=0 to
.
In contrast,
there is little dependence of far-infrared luminosity on AGN luminosity, for
AGN at
.
We do not
find a dependence of far-infrared luminosity on X-ray obscuring column,
for our sample which is dominated by
AGN.
In conjunction with properties
of local and luminous high-z AGN, we interpret these results as reflecting the
interplay between two paths of AGN/host coevolution. A correlation of AGN
luminosity and host star formation is traced locally over a wide range of
luminosities and also extends to luminous high-z AGN. This correlation
reflects an evolutionary connection, likely via merging.
For lower AGN luminosities, star formation is similar to that in non-active
massive galaxies and shows little dependence on AGN luminosity.
The level of this secular, non-merger driven star formation increasingly
dominates over the correlation at increasing redshift.
Key words: galaxies: active - infrared: galaxies
1 Introduction
Measuring the star formation rate of the host galaxy is important for
studying the co-evolution of active galactic nuclei (AGN) and their hosts.
It is often difficult because the AGN can outshine the host at many
wavelengths.
However, the rest frame far-infrared/submm emission
appears dominated by the host for AGN with
m
and higher
(e.g. Netzer et al. 2007; and introduction to Lutz et al.
2010; see also Wang et al. 2008 for luminous high-z QSOs)
and has been used as a host star formation rate diagnostic of high-z AGN
(e.g. Serjeant & Hatziminaoglou 2009;
Mullaney et al. 2010; and Lutz et al. 2010).
Herschel can detect much lower star formation rates than previous
far-infrared and submm studies. It further improves such work by measuring
the rest frame far-infrared SED peak without extrapolation from longer
wavelengths.
We here present a first Herschel study of rest frame far-infrared
emission and host star formation in X-ray selected AGN in the GOODS-N field.
Throughout the paper, we adopt an
,
and
H0=70 km s-1 Mpc-1 cosmology.
2 Data
We use the v2.2 100 and 160 m maps of the GOODS-N field obtained
with PACS (Poglitsch et al. 2010) on board Herschel
(Pilbratt et al. 2010) as a
science demonstration project for the PACS evolutionary probe (PEP)
guaranteed time survey. We use the PACS catalog extracted with
IRAC/MIPS 24
m based position priors by B. Magnelli, to a 3
depth
of
3.0 mJy and
5.7 mJy at 100 and 160
m, respectively.
Since there are Chandra sources that are not detected at 24
m, we
have verified by individual comparison to a blind catalog that we are not
missing PACS
detections on such sources when using the 24
m prior catalog.
For samples of objects undetected by PACS we stack, using the X-ray
positions, into the residual
maps obtained after subtracting the sources in the prior catalog from
the original maps. See also the appendix to
Berta et al. (2010) for a description of the data and catalogs.
The CDFN 2 Ms Chandra X-ray catalog of Alexander et al.
(2003) provides the basis for our AGN selection.
328 of its 503 X-ray sources lie within the part of the PACS map,
which has at least half of the coverage of the central homogeneously covered
region; we restrict ourselves to this subset.
Reaching
in the 0.5-2 keV band, CDFN
X-ray detections include a noticeable number of star forming galaxies
without significant AGN contributions, in addition to bona-fide AGN.
Bauer et al. (2004) have outlined for this very sample a
combination of criteria
to distinguish X-ray AGN from star formation dominated objects, based on
X-ray luminosity, X-ray obscuring column or hardness, optical spectroscopic
classifications, and X-ray/optical flux ratio. We use an updated version of
their classifications
for the GOODS-N X-ray sources, which separates the
328 sources with good PACS coverage into 224 X-ray AGN, 67 X-ray detected
star forming galaxies, and 37 other targets (stars or unidentified).
We use both spectroscopic (Barger et al. 2008, 57% of our
X-ray AGN) and photometric redshifts
(F. Bauer, mostly based on Barger et al. 2003).
X-ray spectral fitting (F. Bauer et al., in prep.) provides intrinsic
X-ray luminosities
and obscuring columns
for the X-ray sources.
The fits use absorbed powerlaws with a fixed Galactic column of
cm-2 and a variable obscuring column at the redshift
of the source. The photon index is allowed to vary for sources above
150 net counts in the 0.5-8 keV band, and is fixed to 1.85 below.
3 Results
The far-infrared detection rate of the 328 X-ray sources above the 3
level in at least one of the two PACS bands is 28% (Table 1).
For the three subgroups, it is 60% (galaxies), 21% (AGN) and 14% (other).
The large detection rate of ``galaxies'' is consistent with their
X-ray emission arising from star formation related processes. A detailed
discussion will be provided elsewhere. In the following, we focus on the
224 X-ray AGN only.
Table 1: PACS detections of GOODS-N X-ray sources.
We use both the individual detections and stacks of nondetections derived via
the stacking library of Bethermin et al. (2010).
The 178 AGN that are individually undetected in both PACS bands are
statistically well detected in the stacks at
mJy (100
m) and
mJy (160
m). These detection errors are derived from multiple
stacks at random positions over the same coverage region of the PACS residual
maps, and using the number of targets as the sample of interest.
To derive far-infrared (FIR) luminosities with minimal assumptions about SED
shapewe compute the rest frame 60 m luminosity
(60
m)
using
the detection wavelength closer to rest 60
m or log-linearly interpolating
for detections in both bands at
0.67 <z<1.67.
We treat stacked 100
m and 160
m fluxes equivalently to derive
the mean rest frame 60
m luminosities of the individually
undetected sources. Given the strong
K-corrections for PACS fluxes over the redshift range of X-ray AGN, this
requires restricted redshift ranges for the stacks, we limit to bins with
and adopt the median z of the particular sample.
Luminosities for the combined sample of detections and nondetections
are obtained as averages weighted by the number of sources.
![]() |
Figure 1: Redshift distribution of the 224 GOODS-N X-ray AGN in the region with good PACS coverage. 46/224 are individually detected in at least one of the PACS bands. |
Open with DEXTER |
Figure 1 shows the redshift distribution of all X-ray
AGN in
our sample. As expected, PACS photometry is most efficient in detecting
AGN hosts. We also focus on
in order to probe
far-infrared rest frame >
m wavelengths, beyond the mid-infrared that
is more easily AGN dominated. Table 2 and Fig. 2
show 60
m luminosities
as a function of redshift, separately for the PACS detections,
stacks of nondetections and the combined sample. Host 60
m
luminosities increase with redshift. An increase is seen in detections,
stacked nondetections, and in the averages for the combined sample.
This trend cannot be simply due to the increase of FIR detection
limit with redshift, which would leave the average luminosities from
the combination of detections and nondetections unchanged.
Table 2: Mean FIR luminosities of different AGN groups.
![]() |
Figure 2: Far-infrared luminosities of GOODS-N X-ray AGN as a function of redshift. Symbols labelled ``All AGN'', with the redshift range indicated, average the detections and nondetections. Their uncertainty is derived from bootstrapping into the combined sample. Number of detections and total number of sources in each bin are indicated. The insert shows the stack for the indvidually undetected 0.8 < z <1.4 sources. |
Open with DEXTER |
![]() |
Figure 3:
Examples of |
Open with DEXTER |
![]() |
Figure 4: Left: far-infrared luminosity as a function of redshift, for different bins in intrinsic rest frame 2-10 keV X-ray luminosity. Values reflect the mean of detections and nondetections, and errors are based on bootstrapping into the respective sample. Right: FIR luminosity as a function of intrinsic hard X-ray luminosity, for different redshift bins. |
Open with DEXTER |
![]() |
Figure 5:
Far-infrared luminosity as a function of X-ray obscuring column.
Sample for redshifts 0.8<z<1.4. Low obscuring column objects have been
placed at
|
Open with DEXTER |




The increase of host far-infrared emission with redshift in
Fig. 2 could still be influenced by the increase of AGN
luminosity
with redshift that is inherent to this X-ray selected sample. To break possible
degeneracies, we have binned our sample in bins defined by redshift
(
z=0.2-0.8, 0.8-1.4, 1.4-2.5) and by intrinsic hard X-ray luminosity
(
<1042 erg s-1,
1042-1043,
1043-1044,
>1044). Table 2
lists FIR luminosities for these bins,
for the figures in the following discussion we omit bins with less
than 5 objects and correspondingly large errors. Errors on
the average
FIR luminosity are dominated by the variations in the underlying
population rather than by photometric error. For that reason, errors in
Table 2 and the figures are
standard deviations derived from bootstrap estimates for the respective
subsamples.
Figure 4 (left) shows that the increase of host
FIR luminosity
with redshift is clearly preserved when considering AGN luminosity bins
separately. Focusing on the far-infrared luminosities of
=
1042-1043 AGN, for which there are
more than 10 objects in each redshift bin, there is no overlap in the
99% confidence intervals of FIR luminosity comparing the
z=0.2-0.8 and the
z=1.4-2.5 redshift range
(<2.8 vs. >
). These 99% confidence intervals were
directly
derived by bootstrapping and thus include non-Gaussianity of distributions
of individual source properties or of errors.
The higher the AGN luminosity bin we consider, the higher is the FIR
luminosity at low z but then its increase with redshift less steep.
Conversely, when studying FIR luminosity as a function of AGN luminosity
(Fig. 4 right) there is an increase
with AGN luminosity in the lowest redshift bin that flattens at higher
redshift, with no significant trend left at z>1.4.
In the luminosity range covered by our sample, we do not find a significant trend of FIR luminosity with X-ray obscuring column (Fig. 5). Such a trend would be expected in merger evolutionary scenarios that are invoking a sequence starburst - obscured AGN - unobscured AGN (e.g. Sanders et al. 1988; Hopkins et al. 2006).
4 Evolution of the relation between AGN luminosity and host star formation
![]() |
Figure 6: Star forming (=far-infrared) luminosity vs. AGN luminosity for the GOODS-N AGN and a local reference sample of extremely hard X-ray selected BAT AGN. The dotted colored lines indicate schematically how the observations are explained by the combination of a diagonal ``evolutionary connection'' trend with a general increase of host star formation with redshift in hosts of moderate luminosity AGN, similar to that for the general galaxy population. The dashed line is the relation implied by Netzer et al. (2009). |
Open with DEXTER |
Due to the excellent sensitivity of Herschel PACS to rest frame far-infrared
emission in the hosts of
z=0.2-2.5 X-ray selected AGN, we have been able to
break the redshift/luminosity degeneracy that affected previous submm-based
studies of AGN host star formation (e.g. Lutz et al. 2010). We
avoid having to make SED assumptions that were
necessary for submm-based studies. Compared to the Spitzer 70 m-based
study of Mullaney et al. (2010), we are probing the rest frame
far-infrared out to
where 70
m data already enter the rest
frame mid-IR with less favourable contrast between host emission and AGN
heated dust.
Results of these submm as well as 70
m based studies agree well with our
findings within the mentioned constraints. To study evolution over a yet
wider redshift range, we supplement in the following
our GOODS-N sample with local (z<0.3) Swift BAT 14-150 keV extremely
hard X-ray
detected AGN (Cusumano 2009). Here, far-infrared information
is taken from the IRAS database,
in a way consistent with the treatment of the GOODS-N AGN (see also
Sect. 3.3 of Lutz et al. 2010).
A variety of studies have established a local correlation between AGN luminosity and star forming luminosity (e.g. Rowan-Robinson 1995; Netzer et al. 2007, 2009), at least in the luminosity regime of bright Seyferts or Quasars. High redshift QSOs appear to extend this relation to yet higher luminosities (e.g. Lutz et al. 2008 and references therein). Figure 6 places our results in that context. Here we have converted from hard X-ray to AGN bolometric luminosity using Eq. (5) of Maiolino et al. (2007) and a ratio 7 between bolometric and 5100 Å luminosity. Local BAT AGN follow the correlation of AGN and star formation luminosity, with the exception of a flattening at low AGN luminosities. Figure 6 shows that high luminosity AGN stay close to the correlation for all redshifts covered by our sample, but the host star formation rates of lower luminosity AGN rise by about an order of magnitude from z=0 to z=1 and by about 1.5 orders of magnitude from z=0 to z=2. Such a behavour can be explained by the combination of twopaths of AGN growth. On one path, AGN growth and host star formation are tightly coupled by an evolutionary mechanism, likely merging. This will result in the diagonal correlation line in Fig. 6. The other path reflects a secular evolution with no close coupling of AGN luminosity and galaxy-integrated host star formation rate. Connections between AGN and star formation phenomena on smaller spatial scales or different timescales might however be present. Here, star formation levels will be similar to those that are pervasive in massive galaxies at a given redshift. This corresponds to the low-luminosity flattening of the relation in Fig. 6 at a level increasing with redshift. The detailed slope of this flatter part is still poorly constrained at current statistics. Bouché et al. (2010) have parametrized on the basis of a variety of observational studies star formation rates of star forming galaxies as a function of galaxy mass and redshift. Their Eq. (1) corresponds to an increase in SFR from redshift 0 to the centers of our three redshift bins by factors 3.0, 7.4, and 19 respectively, consistent with the location of AGN on the flat ``secular'' path in Fig. 6. As discussed in Lutz et al. (2010), such a two-path scenario for AGN is also consistent with a variety of other properties of AGN hosts at high z.
A limitation to the current study is the small
field which restricts the number of
AGN. Upcoming Herschel observations will provide
results for larger
samples of such objects, where we will be able to investigate the relation
above these AGN luminosities, i.e. on the ``merger path''. We might expect an
upturn in host far-infrared luminosity which is suggested at
for
more luminous AGN (Lutz et 2010), or the possible relation of
host star formation to AGN obscuration (e.g. Page et al. 2001).
We thank the referee for helpful comments. PACS has been developed by a consortium of institutes led by MPE (Germany) and including UVIE (Austria); KUL, CSL, IMEC (Belgium); CEA, OAMP (France); MPIA (Germany); IFSI, OAP/OAT, OAA/CAISMI, LENS, SISSA (Italy); IAC (Spain). This development has been supported by the funding agencies BMVIT (Austria), ESA-PRODEX (Belgium), CEA/CNES (France), DLR (Germany), ASI (Italy), and CICYT/MCYT (Spain).
References
- Alexander, D. M., Bauer, F. E., Brandt, W. N., et al. 2003, AJ, 125, 383 Barger, A. J., Cowie, L. L., Capak, P., et al. 2003, ApJ, 126, 632 [Google Scholar]
- Barger, A. J., Cowie, L. L., & Wang, W.-H. 2008, ApJ, 689, 687 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
- Bauer, F. E., Alexander, D. M., Brandt, W. N., et al. 2004, AJ, 128, 2048 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
- Berta, S., et al. 2010, A&A, 518, L30 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [EDP Sciences] [Google Scholar]
- Béthermin, M., Dole, H., Beelen, A., & Aussel, H. 2010, A&A, 512, A78 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [EDP Sciences] [Google Scholar]
- Bouché, N., Dekel, A., Genzel, R., et al. 2010, ApJ, accepted [arXiv:0912.1858] [Google Scholar]
- Cusumano, G. 2009, AIP Conf. Proc., 1126, 104 [Google Scholar]
- Hopkins, P. F., Hernquist, L., Cox, T. J., et al. 2006, ApJS, 163,1 [Google Scholar]
- Lutz, D., Sturm, E., Tacconi, L. J., et al. 2008, ApJ, 684, 853 [Google Scholar]
- Lutz, D., Mainieri, V., Rafferty, D., et al. 2010, ApJ, 712, 1287 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
- Maiolino, R., Shemmer, O., Imanishi, M., et al. 2007, A&A, 468, 979 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [EDP Sciences] [Google Scholar]
- Mullaney, J. R., Alexander, D. M., Huynh, M., Goulding, A. D., & Frayer, D. 2010, MNRAS, 401, 995 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
- Netzer, H. 2009, MNRAS, 399, 1907 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
- Netzer, H., Lutz, D., Schweitzer, M., et al. 2007, ApJ, 666, 806 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
- Page, M. J., Stevens, J. A., Mittaz, J. P. D., & Carrera, F. J. 2001, Science, 294, 2516 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Papovich, C., Rudnick, G., Le Floc'h, E., et al. 2007, ApJ, 668, 45 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
- Pilbratt, G. L., et al. 2010, A&A, 518, L1 [CrossRef] [EDP Sciences] [Google Scholar]
- Poglitsch, A., et al. 2010, A&A, 518, L2 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [EDP Sciences] [Google Scholar]
- Rowan-Robinson, M. 1995, MNRAS, 272, 737 [NASA ADS] [Google Scholar]
- Sanders, D. B., Soifer, B. T., Elias, J. H., et al. 1988, ApJ, 325, 74 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
- Serjeant, S., & Hatziminaoglou, E. 2009, MNRAS, 397, 265 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
- Wang, R., Carilli, C. L., Wagg, J., et al. 2008, ApJ, 687, 848 [NASA ADS] [CrossRef] [Google Scholar]
Footnotes
- ... GOODS-N
- Herschel is an ESA space observatory with science instruments provided by European-led Principal Investigator consortia and with important participation from NASA.
All Tables
Table 1: PACS detections of GOODS-N X-ray sources.
Table 2: Mean FIR luminosities of different AGN groups.
All Figures
![]() |
Figure 1: Redshift distribution of the 224 GOODS-N X-ray AGN in the region with good PACS coverage. 46/224 are individually detected in at least one of the PACS bands. |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 2: Far-infrared luminosities of GOODS-N X-ray AGN as a function of redshift. Symbols labelled ``All AGN'', with the redshift range indicated, average the detections and nondetections. Their uncertainty is derived from bootstrapping into the combined sample. Number of detections and total number of sources in each bin are indicated. The insert shows the stack for the indvidually undetected 0.8 < z <1.4 sources. |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 3:
Examples of |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 4: Left: far-infrared luminosity as a function of redshift, for different bins in intrinsic rest frame 2-10 keV X-ray luminosity. Values reflect the mean of detections and nondetections, and errors are based on bootstrapping into the respective sample. Right: FIR luminosity as a function of intrinsic hard X-ray luminosity, for different redshift bins. |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 5:
Far-infrared luminosity as a function of X-ray obscuring column.
Sample for redshifts 0.8<z<1.4. Low obscuring column objects have been
placed at
|
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
![]() |
Figure 6: Star forming (=far-infrared) luminosity vs. AGN luminosity for the GOODS-N AGN and a local reference sample of extremely hard X-ray selected BAT AGN. The dotted colored lines indicate schematically how the observations are explained by the combination of a diagonal ``evolutionary connection'' trend with a general increase of host star formation with redshift in hosts of moderate luminosity AGN, similar to that for the general galaxy population. The dashed line is the relation implied by Netzer et al. (2009). |
Open with DEXTER | |
In the text |
Copyright ESO 2010
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.