An Excess of AGNs Triggered by Galaxy Mergers in MaNGA Galaxies of Stellar Mass ∼10¹¹ M_⊙ · arXivDesk
2404.14490Apr 22, 2024The MaNGA AGN Catalog (https://content.cld.iop.org/journals/0004-637X/963/1/53/revision1/apjad1a15t1_mrt.txt) and MaNGA Galaxy Merger Catalog (https://content.cld.iop.org/journals/0004-637X/963/1/53/revision1/apjad1a15t2_mrt.txt) are available for download from the ApJ article. The MaNGA AGN Catalog is also available as an SDSS value added catalog (https://data.sdss.org/sas/dr17/env/MANGA_AGN/)
An Excess of AGNs Triggered by Galaxy Mergers in MaNGA Galaxies of Stellar Mass ∼1011M⊙
Julia M. Comerford, Rebecca Nevin, James Negus, R. Scott Barrows, Michael Eracleous, Francisco Müller-Sánchez, Namrata Roy, Aaron Stemo +2
To facilitate new studies of galaxy merger driven fueling of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), we present a catalog of 387 AGNs that we have identified in the final population of over 10,000z<0.15 galaxies observed by the SDSS-IV integral field spectroscopy survey Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA). We selected the AGNs via mid-infrared WISE colors, Swift/BAT ultra hard X-ray detections, NVSS and FIRST radio observations, and broad emission lines in SDSS spectra. By combining the MaNGA AGN catalog with a new SDSS catalog of galaxy mergers that were identified based on a suite of hydrodynamical simulations of merging galaxies, we study the link between galaxy mergers and nuclear activity for AGNs above a limiting bolometric luminosity of 1044.4
Nearby in the stack
erg s
−1
. We find an excess of AGNs in mergers, relative to non-mergers, for galaxies with stellar mass
∼1011
M⊙
, where the AGN excess is somewhat stronger in major mergers than in minor mergers. Further, when we combine minor and major mergers and sort by merger stage, we find that the highest AGN excess occurs in post-coalescence mergers in the highest mass galaxies. However, we find no evidence of a correlation between galaxy mergers and AGN luminosity or accretion rate. In summary, while galaxy mergers overall do appear to trigger or enhance AGN activity more than non-mergers, they do not seem to induce higher levels of accretion or higher luminosities. We provide the MaNGA AGN Catalog and the MaNGA Galaxy Merger Catalog for the community here.