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LeMMINGs. VI. Connecting nuclear activity to bulge properties of active and inactive galaxies: radio scaling relations and galaxy environment

LeMMINGs. VI. Connecting nuclear activity to bulge properties of active and inactive galaxies: radio scaling relations and galaxy environment
LeMMINGs. VI. Connecting nuclear activity to bulge properties of active and inactive galaxies: radio scaling relations and galaxy environment
Multiwavelength studies indicate that nuclear activity and bulge properties are closely related, but the details remain unclear. To study this further, we combine Hubble Space Telescope bulge structural and photometric properties with 1.5 GHz, e-MERLIN nuclear radio continuum data from the LeMMINGs survey for a large sample of 173 ‘active’ galaxies (LINERs and Seyferts) and ‘inactive’ galaxies (H IIs and absorption line galaxies, ALGs). Dividing our sample into active and inactive, they define distinct (radio core luminosity)–(bulge mass), LR,core−M∗,bulge, relations, with a mass turnover at M∗,bulge∼109.8±0.3M⊙
(supermassive blackhole mass MBH∼106.8±0.3M⊙), which marks the transition from AGN-dominated nuclear radio emission in more massive bulges to that mainly driven by stellar processes in low-mass bulges. None of our 10/173 bulge-less galaxies host an AGN. The AGN fraction increases with increasing M∗,bulge such that foptical_AGN∝M0.24±0.06∗,bulge and fradio_AGN∝M0.24±0.05∗,bulge. Between M∗,bulge∼108.5 and 1011.3M⊙, foptical_AGN steadily rises from 15 ± 4 to 80 ± 5 per cent. We find that at fixed bulge mass, the radio loudness, nuclear radio activity, and the (optical and radio) AGN fraction exhibit no dependence on environment. Radio-loud hosts preferentially possess an early-type morphology than radio-quiet hosts, the two types are however indistinguishable in terms of bulge Sérsic index and ellipticity, while results on the bulge inner logarithmic profile slope are inconclusive. We finally discuss the importance of bulge mass in determining the AGN triggering processes, including potential implications for the nuclear radio emission in nearby galaxies.
astro-ph.CO, astro-ph.GA
1365-2966
3412-3438
Dullo, B. T.
ae12129a-e3e0-4628-a208-cb5f4b329baf
Knapen, J.H.
530be1bc-2889-4654-a05d-788dd6f3832e
Beswick, R.J.
d3f37275-1f32-4ba3-a745-7dab2d21da60
Baldi, R.D.
c416ed4c-5d1c-48ee-989c-3a8ab38cd124
Williams, D.R.A.
c9ded967-198f-4c26-96b1-8c03d7d26445
McHardy, I. M.
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Green, D. A.
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Paz, A. Gil de
dadb4165-90f2-47ea-964e-797d1247ed06
Aalto, S.
d8540069-66e7-4ecd-9143-b09ef58ff747
Alberdi, A.
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Argo, M.K.
f4fd7615-6b60-44f4-97aa-993c91e56a9b
Klöckner, H-R.
e97b12bf-8912-431d-ae3b-5888f1a35a5f
Mutie, I.M.
5133515e-9ccb-4e6f-be79-6544eedfdec5
Saikia, D.J.
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Saikia, P.
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Stevens, I.R.
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Dullo, B. T.
ae12129a-e3e0-4628-a208-cb5f4b329baf
Knapen, J.H.
530be1bc-2889-4654-a05d-788dd6f3832e
Beswick, R.J.
d3f37275-1f32-4ba3-a745-7dab2d21da60
Baldi, R.D.
c416ed4c-5d1c-48ee-989c-3a8ab38cd124
Williams, D.R.A.
c9ded967-198f-4c26-96b1-8c03d7d26445
McHardy, I. M.
4f215137-9cc4-4a08-982e-772a0b24c17e
Green, D. A.
1e04e3e0-fbba-42cd-aa71-64adacb50928
Paz, A. Gil de
dadb4165-90f2-47ea-964e-797d1247ed06
Aalto, S.
d8540069-66e7-4ecd-9143-b09ef58ff747
Alberdi, A.
99244fd2-a244-49e5-8930-b212637563da
Argo, M.K.
f4fd7615-6b60-44f4-97aa-993c91e56a9b
Klöckner, H-R.
e97b12bf-8912-431d-ae3b-5888f1a35a5f
Mutie, I.M.
5133515e-9ccb-4e6f-be79-6544eedfdec5
Saikia, D.J.
5b95958d-8b6c-4c82-b34b-9b3b67a35d32
Saikia, P.
dc2a7bcb-0d6c-492f-9cf9-2624a23476a4
Stevens, I.R.
070c53f6-1781-414e-a2ad-0e1a91cdc1a5

Dullo, B. T., Knapen, J.H., Beswick, R.J., Baldi, R.D., Williams, D.R.A., McHardy, I. M., Green, D. A., Paz, A. Gil de, Aalto, S., Alberdi, A., Argo, M.K., Klöckner, H-R., Mutie, I.M., Saikia, D.J., Saikia, P. and Stevens, I.R. (2023) LeMMINGs. VI. Connecting nuclear activity to bulge properties of active and inactive galaxies: radio scaling relations and galaxy environment. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 522 (3), 3412-3438. (doi:10.1093/mnras/stad1122).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Multiwavelength studies indicate that nuclear activity and bulge properties are closely related, but the details remain unclear. To study this further, we combine Hubble Space Telescope bulge structural and photometric properties with 1.5 GHz, e-MERLIN nuclear radio continuum data from the LeMMINGs survey for a large sample of 173 ‘active’ galaxies (LINERs and Seyferts) and ‘inactive’ galaxies (H IIs and absorption line galaxies, ALGs). Dividing our sample into active and inactive, they define distinct (radio core luminosity)–(bulge mass), LR,core−M∗,bulge, relations, with a mass turnover at M∗,bulge∼109.8±0.3M⊙
(supermassive blackhole mass MBH∼106.8±0.3M⊙), which marks the transition from AGN-dominated nuclear radio emission in more massive bulges to that mainly driven by stellar processes in low-mass bulges. None of our 10/173 bulge-less galaxies host an AGN. The AGN fraction increases with increasing M∗,bulge such that foptical_AGN∝M0.24±0.06∗,bulge and fradio_AGN∝M0.24±0.05∗,bulge. Between M∗,bulge∼108.5 and 1011.3M⊙, foptical_AGN steadily rises from 15 ± 4 to 80 ± 5 per cent. We find that at fixed bulge mass, the radio loudness, nuclear radio activity, and the (optical and radio) AGN fraction exhibit no dependence on environment. Radio-loud hosts preferentially possess an early-type morphology than radio-quiet hosts, the two types are however indistinguishable in terms of bulge Sérsic index and ellipticity, while results on the bulge inner logarithmic profile slope are inconclusive. We finally discuss the importance of bulge mass in determining the AGN triggering processes, including potential implications for the nuclear radio emission in nearby galaxies.

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Accepted/In Press date: 12 April 2023
e-pub ahead of print date: 18 April 2023
Published date: 1 July 2023
Additional Information: Funding Information: We thank the referee for valuable comments which improved the presentation of this paper. BTD acknowledges support from grant 'Ayudas para la realización de proyectos de I+D para jóvenes doctores 2019.' for the HiMAGC (High-resolution, Multi-band Analysis of Galaxy Centres) project funded by Comunidad de Madrid and Universidad Complutense de Madrid under grant number PR65/19-22417. BTD and AGdP acknowledge financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIUN) under grant No. RTI2018-096188-B-I00. JHK acknowledges financial support from the State Research Agency (AEI-MCINN) of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the grant 'The structure and evolution of galaxies and their central regions' with reference PID2019-105602GB-I00/10.13039/501100011033, from the ACIISI, Consejería de Economía, Conocimiento y Empleo del Gobierno de Canarias and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) under grant with reference PROID2021010044, and from IAC project P/300724, financed by the Ministry of Science and Innovation, through the State Budget and by the Canary Islands Department of Economy, Knowledge and Employment, through the Regional Budget of the Autonomous Community. AA thanks the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (grant PID2020-117404GB-C21) and the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIN through the 'Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa' award for the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709). We would like to acknowledge the support the e-MERLIN Legacy project 'LeMMINGs', upon which this study is based. e-MERLIN and formerly, MERLIN, is a National Facility operated by the University of Manchester at Jodrell Bank Observatory on behalf of the STFC. We acknowledge Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, which is funded by the STFC. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This work has made use of NUMPY (van der Walt, Colbert & Varoquaux 2011), MATPLOTLIB (Hunter 2007), and CORNER (Foreman-Mackey 2016) and ASTROPY, a community-developed core PYTHON package for Astronomy (Astropy Collaboration 2013, 2018), CUBEHELIX (Green 2011), JUPYTER (Kluyver et al. 2016), SCIPY (Virtanen et al. 2020), and of TOPCAT (i.e. 'Tool for Operations on Catalogues And Tables', Taylor 2005).
Keywords: astro-ph.CO, astro-ph.GA

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Local EPrints ID: 478245
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/478245
ISSN: 1365-2966
PURE UUID: f81d76ef-620e-45f2-ba9a-6792eeb91196
ORCID for D.R.A. Williams: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-7361-0246

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Date deposited: 26 Jun 2023 16:46
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 03:02

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Contributors

Author: B. T. Dullo
Author: J.H. Knapen
Author: R.J. Beswick
Author: R.D. Baldi
Author: D.R.A. Williams ORCID iD
Author: I. M. McHardy
Author: D. A. Green
Author: A. Gil de Paz
Author: S. Aalto
Author: A. Alberdi
Author: M.K. Argo
Author: H-R. Klöckner
Author: I.M. Mutie
Author: D.J. Saikia
Author: P. Saikia
Author: I.R. Stevens

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