A Possible Correlation between the Luminosities and Lifetimes of Active Galactic Nuclei

Creators: Adelberger, Kurt L.; Steidel, Charles C.

Abstract

We use the clustering of galaxies around distant AGNs to show with ~90% confidence that fainter AGNs are longer lived. Our argument is simple: since the measured galaxy-AGN cross-correlation length r_0 ~ 5 h^(-1) Mpc does not vary significantly over a 10 mag range in AGN optical luminosity, faint and bright AGNs must reside in dark matter halos with similar masses. The halos that host bright and faint AGNs must therefore have similar abundances, and bright AGNs are rare partly because their lifetimes are short.

Additional Information

© 2005. The American Astronomical Society. Received 2005 March 10; accepted 2005 May 11. K. L. A. would like to thank L. Ho, L. Hernquist, L. Ferrarese, and J. Kollmeier for many interesting conversations and an anonymous referee for encouraging us to discuss the physical interpretation of the duty cycle. Our collaborators in the Lyman break survey did most of the work in taking and reducing these data. We are grateful that they let us proceed with the analysis. This research has made use of the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Based, in part, on data obtained at the W. M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership between the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and NASA, and was made possible by the generous financial support of the W. M. Keck Foundation.

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