4.7 Article

DECOMPOSING STAR FORMATION AND ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS WITH SPITZER MID-INFRARED SPECTRA: LUMINOSITY FUNCTIONS AND CO-EVOLUTION

Journal

ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Volume 722, Issue 1, Pages 653-667

Publisher

IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/722/1/653

Keywords

galaxies: active; galaxies: luminosity function, mass function; infrared: galaxies; quasars: general; X-rays: galaxies

Funding

  1. NASA [JPL-1344606]

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We present Spitzer 7-38 mu m spectra for a 24 mu m flux-limited sample of galaxies at z similar to 0.7 in the COSMOS field. The detailed high-quality spectra allow us to cleanly separate star formation (SF) and active galactic nucleus (AGN) in individual galaxies. We first decompose mid-infrared luminosity functions (LFs). We find that the SF 8 mu m and 15 mu m LFs are well described by Schechter functions. AGNs dominate the space density at high luminosities, which leads to the shallow bright-end slope of the overall mid-infrared LFs. The total infrared (8-1000 mu m) LF from 70 mu m selected galaxies shows a shallower bright-end slope than the bolometrically corrected SF 15 mu m LF, owing to the intrinsic dispersion in the mid-to-far-infrared spectral energy distributions. We then study the contemporary growth of galaxies and their supermassive black holes (BHs). Seven of the thirty-one luminous infrared galaxies with Spitzer spectra host luminous AGNs, implying an AGN duty cycle of 23% +/- 9%. The time-averaged ratio of BH accretion rate and SF rate matches the local M-BH-M-bulge relation and the M-BH-M-host relation at z similar to 1. These results favor co-evolution scenarios in which BH growth and intense SF happen in the same event but the former spans a shorter lifetime than the latter. Finally, we compare our mid-infrared spectroscopic selection with other AGN identification methods and discuss candidate Compton-thick AGNs in the sample. While only half of the mid-infrared spectroscopically selected AGNs are detected in X-ray, similar to 90% of them can be identified with their near-infrared spectral indices.

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