2014/07/08 by Mojegan Azadi, James Aird, Azadi, Mojegan +23 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #FOS: Physical sciences #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #astro-ph.GA
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1407.1975
openalex publication_date 2014/07/08 · arxiv created 2015/05/28 · arxiv updated 2015/05/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the evidence for a connection between active galactic nuclei (AGN) fueling and star formation by investigating the relationship between the X-ray luminosities of AGN and the star formation rates (SFRs) of their host galaxies. We identify a sample of 309 AGN with 1041<LX<1044 erg s-1 at 0.2 < z < 1.2 in the PRIMUS redshift survey. We find AGN in galaxies with a wide range of SFR at a given LX. We do not find a significant correlation between SFR and the observed instantaneous LX for star forming AGN host galaxies. However, there is a weak but significant correlation between the mean LX and SFR of detected AGN in star forming galaxies, which likely reflects that LX varies on shorter timescales than SFR. We find no correlation between stellar mass and LX within the AGN population. Within both populations of star forming and quiescent galaxies, we find a similar power-law distribution in the probability of hosting an AGN as a function of specific accretion rate. Furthermore, at a given stellar mass, we find a star forming galaxy ∼2-3 more likely than a quiescent galaxy to host an AGN of a given specific accretion rate. The probability of a galaxy hosting an AGN is constant across the main sequence of star formation. These results indicate that there is an underlying connection between star formation and the presence of AGN, but AGN are often hosted by quiescent galaxies.