Possible evidence of the radio AGN quenching of neighbouring galaxies at z ∼ 1

Creators: Shen, Lu; Tomczak, Adam R.; Lemaux, Brian C.; Pelliccia, Debora; Lubin, Lori M.; Miller, Neal A.; Perrotta, Serena; Fassnacht, Christopher D.; Becker, Robert H.; Gal, Roy R.; Wu, Po-Feng; Squires, Gordon

Abstract

Using 57 radio active galactic nuclei (RAGNs) at 0.55 ≤ z ≤ 1.3 drawn from five fields of the Observations of Redshift Evolution in Large-Scale Environments (ORELSE) survey, we study the effect of injection of energy from outbursts of RAGN on their spectroscopically confirmed neighbouring galaxies (SNGs). We observe an elevated fraction of quenched neighbours (f_q) within 500 kpc projected radius of RAGN in the most dense local environments compared to those of non-RAGN control samples matched to the RAGN population in colour, stellar mass, and local environment at 2σ significance. Further analyses show that there are offsets at similar significance between f_qs of RAGN-SNGs and the appropriate control samples for galaxies specifically in cluster environments and those hosted by most massive cluster galaxies, which tentatively suggests that some negative feedback from the RAGN is occurring in these dense environments. In addition, we find that the median radio power of RAGN increases with increasing local overdensity, an effect which may lend itself to the quenching of neighbouring galaxies. Furthermore, we find that, in the highest local overdensities, the f_q of the sub-sample of lower stellar mass RAGN-SNGs is larger than that of the higher stellar mass RAGN-SNGs sub-sample, which indicates a more pronounced effect from RAGN on lower stellar mass galaxies. We propose a scenario in which RAGN residing within clusters might heat the intracluster medium (ICM) affecting both in situ star formation and any inflowing gas that remains in their neighbouring galaxies.

Additional Information

© 2019 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model). Accepted 2019 January 11. Received 2019 January 11; in original form 2018 October 4. Published: 15 January 2019. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1411943. Part of the work presented herein is supported by NASA Grant No. NNX15AK92G. P.F.W. acknowledges funding through the Horizon 2020 European Research Council Consolidator Grant No. 683184. We thank the Stanislav S. Shabala as the referee for a constructive report that greatly improved the paper. This study is based on data taken with the Karl G. Jansky VLA that is operated by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is a facility of the National Science Foundation operated under cooperative agreement by Associated Universities, Inc. This work is based, in part, on data collected at the Subaru Telescope and obtained from the SMOKA, which is operated by the Astronomy Data centre, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan; observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology under a contract with NASA; and data collected at UKIRT that is supported by NASA and operated under an agreement among the University of Hawaii, the University of Arizona, and Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology centre; operations are enabled through the cooperation of the East Asian Observatory. When the data reported here were acquired, UKIRT was operated by the Joint Astronomy Centre on behalf of the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the UK. This study is also based, in part, on observations obtained with WIRCam, a joint project of CFHT, Taiwan, Korea, Canada, France, and the Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope that is operated by the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada, the Institut National des Sciences de l'Univers of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique of France, and the University of Hawai'i. The scientific results reported in this article are based in part on observations made by the Chandra X-ray Observatory and data obtained from the Chandra Data Archive. The spectrographic data presented herein were obtained at the W.M. Keck Observatory, which is operated as a scientific partnership among the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The Observatory was made possible by the generous financial support of the W.M. Keck Foundation. We wish to thank the indigenous Hawaiian community for allowing us to be guests on their sacred mountain, a privilege, without with, this work would not have been possible. We are most fortunate to be able to conduct observations from this site.

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