Scrutinizing evidence for the triggering of active galactic nuclei in the outskirts of massive galaxy clusters at z ≈ 1

Abstract

Environmental effects are believed to play an important yet poorly understood role in triggering accretion events onto the
supermassive black holes (SMBHs) of galaxies (active galactic nuclei; AGNs). Massive clusters, which represent the densest
structures in the Universe, provide an excellent laboratory to isolate environmental effects and study their impact on black hole
growth. In this work, we critically review observational evidence for the preferential activation of SMBHs in the outskirts of
galaxy clusters. We develop a semi-empirical model under the assumption that the incidence of AGN in galaxies is independent
of environment. We demonstrate that the model is broadly consistent with recent observations on the AGN halo occupation at z = 0.2, although it may overpredict satellite AGN in massive haloes at that low redshift. We then use this model to interpret the
projected radial distribution of X-ray sources around high redshift (z ≈ 1) massive (> 5 × 1014 M_Θ) clusters, which show excess
counts outside their virial radius. Such an excess naturally arises in our model as a result of sample variance. Up to 20 per cent
of the simulated projected radial distributions show excess counts similar to the observations, which are however, because of
background/foreground AGN and hence, not physically associated with the cluster. Our analysis emphasizes the importance of
projection effects and shows that current observations of z ≈ 1 clusters remain inconclusive on the activation of SMBHs during
infall.

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