2015/03/31 by W. L. Williams, H. J. A. Röttgering · 35 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Active galactic nucleus #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Galaxy formation and evolution #Luminosity #Luminosity function #Physics #Radio galaxy #Redshift #Sky #Star formation #Stellar mass #astro-ph.GA
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnras/stv692
published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 450(2), 1538-1545 (Oxford University Press) · Accepted for publication in MNRAS; 9 pages, 7 figures
arxiv created 2015/03/31 · openalex publication_date 2015/04/25 · arxiv updated 2015/06/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We present a study of the evolution of the fraction of radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGN) as a function of their host stellar mass. We make use of two samples of radio galaxies: one in the local Universe, 0.01 < z ≤ 0.3, using a combined SDSS-NVSS (Sloan Digital Sky Survey NRAO Very Large Array Sky Survey) sample and the other at higher redshifts, 0.5 < z ≤ 2, constructed from the VLA-COSMOSDEEP Radio Survey at 1.4 GHz and a Ks-selected catalogue of the COSMOS/UltraVISTA field. We observe an increase of more than an order of magnitude in the fraction of lower mass galaxies (M* < 1010.75 M⊙) which host radio-loud AGN with radio powers P1.4 GHz > 1024 W Hz−1 at z ∼ 1–2 while the radio-loud fraction for higher mass galaxies (M* > 1011.25 M⊙) remains the same. We argue that this increase is driven largely by the increase in cold or radiative mode accretion with increasing cold gas supply at earlier epochs. The increasing population of low-mass radio-loud AGN can thus explain the upturn in the radio luminosity function at high redshift which is important for understanding the impact of AGN feedback in galaxy evolution.