Journal
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Volume 737, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/737/2/101
Keywords
black hole physics; galaxies: active; galaxies: interactions; galaxies: nuclei; quasars: general
Categories
Funding
- NSF [AST-0707266]
- NASA through Chandra X-ray Center [PF0-110076]
- Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for NASA [NAS8-03060]
- Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Energy
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Japanese Monbukagakusho
- Max Planck Society
- Higher Education Funding Council for England
- American Museum of Natural History
- Astrophysical Institute Potsdam
- University of Basel
- University of Cambridge
- Case Western Reserve University
- University of Chicago
- Drexel University
- Fermilab
- Institute for Advanced Study
- Japan Participation Group
- Johns Hopkins University
- Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics
- Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology
- Korean Scientist Group
- Chinese Academy of Sciences (LAMOST)
- Los Alamos National Laboratory
- Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy (MPIA)
- Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics (MPA)
- New Mexico State University
- Ohio State University
- University of Pittsburgh
- University of Portsmouth
- Princeton University
- United States Naval Observatory
- University of Washington
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Galaxy-galaxy mergers and close interactions have long been regarded as a viable mechanism for channeling gas toward the central supermassive black holes (SMBHs) of galaxies which are triggered as active galactic nuclei (AGNs). AGN pairs, in which the central SMBHs of a galaxy merger are both active, are expected to be common from such events. We conduct a systematic study of 1286 AGN pairs at (z) over bar similar to 0.1 with line-of-sight velocity offsets Delta v < 600 km s(-1) and projected separations r(p) < 100 h(70)(-1) kpc, selected from the Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). This AGN pair sample was drawn from 138,070 AGNs optically identified based on diagnostic emission line ratios and/or line widths. The fraction of AGN pairs with 5 h(70)(-1) kpc less than or similar to r(p) < 100 h(70)(-1) kpc among all spectroscopically selected AGNs at 0.02 < z < 0.16 is 3.6% after correcting for SDSS spectroscopic incompleteness; similar to 30% of these pairs show morphological tidal features in their SDSS images, and the fraction becomes greater than or similar to 80% for pairs with the brightest nuclei. Our sample increases the number of known AGN pairs on these scales by more than an order of magnitude. We study their AGN and host-galaxy star formation properties in a companion paper.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available