Journal
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 519, Issue 2, Pages 2929-2939Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stac3606
Keywords
galaxies: active; galaxies: evolution; galaxies: nuclei; (galaxies) quasars: general
Categories
Funding
- Finnish Cultural Foundation
- Finnish Centre for Astronomy (FINCA)
- Academy of Finland [311438]
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science
- Center for High-Performance Computing at the University of Utah
- Brazilian Participation Group
- Carnegie Institution for Science
- Chilean Participation Group
- French Participation Group
- ESO [0103.B-0737, 0104.B-0197]
- Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias
- Johns Hopkins University
- Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (IPMU)/University of Tokyo
- Korean Participation Group
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Leibniz Institut fur Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP)
- Max-Planck-Institut fur Astronomie (MPIA Heidelberg)
- Max-Planck-Institut fur Astrophysik (MPA Garching)
- Max-Planck-Institut fur Extraterrestrische Physik (MPE)
- National Astronomical Observatories of China
- New Mexico State University
- New York University
- University of Notre Dame
- Observatario Nacional/MCTI
- Ohio State University
- Pennsylvania State University
- Shanghai Astronomical Observatory
- United Kingdom Participation Group
- Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
- University of Arizona
- University of Colorado Boulder
- University of Oxford
- University of Portsmouth
- University of Utah
- University of Virginia
- University of Washington
- University of Wisconsin
- Vanderbilt University
- Yale University
- Academy of Finland (AKA) [311438] Funding Source: Academy of Finland (AKA)
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This study presents multi-object optical spectroscopy of galaxies in the vicinity of low-redshift quasars and inactive massive galaxies, revealing their physical associations and recent star formation events. The results show that about half of the observed quasars have at least one associated companion galaxy. Compared to inactive galaxies, the companions of quasars more frequently exhibit emission lines, suggesting a moderate link between nuclear activity and recent star formation in their environments.
We present multi-object optical spectroscopy of the galaxies in the environment of 12 low-redshift (z < 0.5) quasars and of 11 inactive massive galaxies chosen to match the properties of the quasar host galaxies to probe physical association and possible events of recent star formation (SF). The quasars are selected from a sample of QSOs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Stripe 82 region for which both the host galaxy and the large-scale environments were previously investigated. The new observations complement those reported in our previous works on close companion galaxies of nearby quasars. For the whole data set, we find that for about half (19 out of 44) of the observed QSOs, there is at least one associated companion galaxy. In addition to the new spectroscopic observations, we add data from the SDSS data base for the full sample of objects. We find that the incidence of companion galaxies in the fields of QSO (17 per cent) is not significantly different from that of inactive galaxies (19 per cent) similar to quasar hosts in redshift and mass. Nevertheless, the companions of quasars exhibit more frequently emission lines than those of inactive galaxies, suggesting a moderate link between the nuclear activity and recent SF in their environments.
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