Observational evidence that positive and negative AGN feedback depends on galaxy mass and jet power

Journal article

Several studies support the existence of a link between the active galactic nucleus (AGN) and star formation activity. Radio jets have been argued to be an ideal mechanism for direct interaction between the AGN and the host galaxy. A drawback of previous surveys of AGN is that they are fundamentally limited by the degeneracy between redshift and luminosity in flux-density limited samples. To overcome this limitation, we present far-infrared Herschel observations of 74 radio-loud quasars (RLQs), 72 radio-quiet quasars (RQQs) and 27 radio galaxies (RGs), selected at 0.9 < z < 1.1, which span over two decades in optical luminosity. By decoupling luminosity from evolutionary effects, we investigate how the star formation rate (SFR) depends on AGN luminosity, radio-loudness and orientation. We find that (1) the SFR shows a weak correlation with the bolometric luminosity for all AGN sub-samples, (2) the RLQs show an SFR excess of about a factor of 1.4 compared to the RQQs, matched in terms of black hole mass and bolometric luminosity, suggesting that either positive radio-jet feedback or radio AGN triggering is linked to star formation triggering, and (3) RGs have lower SFRs by a factor of 2.5 than the RLQ sub-sample with the same BH mass and bolometric luminosity. We suggest that there is some jet power threshold at which radio-jet feedback switches from enhancing star formation (by compressing gas) to suppressing it (by ejecting gas). This threshold depends on both galaxy mass and jet power.

Authors: Kalfountzou, E; Stevens, J; Jarvis, M; Hardcastle, M; Wilner, D

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Volume: 471
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 28–58
• Publication date: 2017-06-01
• Acceptance date: 2017-05-26
• DOI: 10.1093/mnras/stx1333
• EISSN: 1365-2966
• ISSN: 0035-8711
• Keywords: galaxies: evolution; galaxies: star formation; galaxies: active; galaxies: jets; infrared: galaxies; quasars: general