BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey. XX. Molecular Gas in Nearby Hard-X-Ray-selected AGN Galaxies

Creators: Koss, Michael J.; Strittmatter, Benjamin; Lamperti, Isabella; Shimizu, Taro; Trakhtenbrot, Benny; Saintonge, Amelie; Treister, Ezequiel; Cicone, Claudia; Mushotzky, Richard; Oh, Kyuseok; Ricci, Claudio; Stern, Daniel; Ananna, Tonima Tasnim; Bauer, Franz E.; Privon, George C.; Bär, Rudolf E.; De Breuck, Carlos; Harrison, Fiona; Ichikawa, Kohei; Powell, Meredith C.; Rosario, David; Sanders, David B.; Schawinski, Kevin; Shao, Li; Urry, C. Megan; Veilleux, Sylvain

Abstract

We present the host-galaxy molecular gas properties of a sample of 213 nearby (0.01 < z < 0.05) hard-X-ray-selected active galactic nucleus (AGN) galaxies, drawn from the 70-month catalog of Swift's Burst Alert Telescope (BAT), with 200 new CO(2–1) line measurements obtained with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope and the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope. We find that AGN in massive galaxies (log (M_*/M_⊙) > 10.5) tend to have more molecular gas and higher gas fractions than inactive galaxies matched in stellar mass. When matched in star formation, we find AGN galaxies show no difference from inactive galaxies, with no evidence that AGN feedback affects the molecular gas. The higher molecular gas content is related to AGN galaxies hosting a population of gas-rich early types with an order of magnitude more molecular gas and a smaller fraction of quenched, passive galaxies (~5% versus 49%) compared to inactive galaxies. The likelihood of a given galaxy hosting an AGN (L_(bol) > 10⁴⁴ erg s⁻¹ ) increases by ~10–100 between a molecular gas mass of 10^(8.7) M_⊙ and 10^(10.2) M_⊙. AGN galaxies with a higher Eddington ratio (log(L/L_(Edd)) > −1.3) tend to have higher molecular gas masses and gas fractions. The log(N_H/ cm⁻² ) > 23.4) of AGN galaxies with higher column densities are associated with lower depletion timescales and may prefer hosts with more gas centrally concentrated in the bulge that may be more prone to quenching than galaxy-wide molecular gas. The significant average link of host-galaxy molecular gas supply to supermassive black hole (SMBH) growth may naturally lead to the general correlations found between SMBHs and their host galaxies, such as the correlations between SMBH mass and bulge properties, and the redshift evolution of star formation and SMBH growth.

Additional Information

© 2021. The American Astronomical Society. Received 2020 February 21; revised 2020 October 10; accepted 2020 October 19; published 2021 February 4. We acknowledge support from NASA through ADAP award NNH16CT03C and 80NSSC19K0749 (M.K.); the Israel Science Foundation through grant No. 1849/19 (B.T.); the Royal Society through the award of a University Research Fellowship (A.S.); ANID grants PIA ACT172033 (E.T.), Basal-CATA PFB-06/2007 and AFB170002 grants (E.T., F.E.B.), FONDECYT Regular 1160999, 1190818 (E.T., F.E.B.), and 1200495 (E.T., F.E.B.), and Millennium Science Initiative ICN12_009 (F.E.B.); the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2020R1C1C1005462) (K.O.), the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science JSPS ID:17321 (K.O.); the ANID+PAI Convocatoria Nacional subvencion a instalacion en la academia convocatoria año 2017 PAI77170080 (C.R.); the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council through grants ST/P000541/1 and ST/T000244/1 (D.R.); and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with NASA (D.S.). We acknowledge the work that Swift-BAT team has done to make this project possible. We acknowledge the help of Rozenn Boissay-Malaquin. This publication is based on data acquired with the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX). APEX is a collaboration between the Max-Planck-Institut fur Radioastronomie, the European Southern Observatory, and the Onsala Space Observatory. Based on observations collected at the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere under ESO programmes 198.A-0708(A), 0100.A-0384(A), 097.B-0757(A), 098.B-0152(A), 081.F-9405(A), and 091.F-9313(A) as well as Chilean programs C-097.F-9705A-2016, C-098.F-9700-2016, and C-0100.F-9715. The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope is operated by the East Asian Observatory on behalf of The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan; Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics; the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute; Center for Astronomical Mega-Science (as well as the National Key R&D Program of China with No. 2017YFA0402700). Additional funding support is provided by the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom and participating universities in the United Kingdom and Canada. This project involved JCMT programs M11AH42C, M11BH35C, M12AH35C, M12BH03E, and M09BH34B. The Starlink software (Currie et al. 2014) is currently supported by the East Asian Observatory. This research 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 and the SIMBAD database, operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France (Wenger et al. 2000). Facilities: APEX - Atacama Pathfinder Experiment, JCMT - , PS1 - , Swift (BAT). - Software: astropy (Collaboration et al. 2013), APLpy (Robitaille & Bressert 2012), CIAO (v4.11, Fruscione et al. 2006), GILDAS (Pety 2005; Gildas Team 2013), lifelines (version 0.25.4, Davidson-Pilon et al. 2020), Matplotlib (Hunter 2007), Numpy (Harris et al. 2020), Sherpa (v4.12.1, Freeman et al. 2001; Burke & Laurino 2020), Starlink (Currie et al. 2014).

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