The Star Formation and Nuclear Accretion Histories of Normal Galaxies in the Ages Survey

Citation:

Watson CR, Kochanek CS, Forman WR, Hickox RC, Jones CJ, Brown MJI, Brand K, Dey A, Jannuzi BT, Kenter AT, et al. The Star Formation and Nuclear Accretion Histories of Normal Galaxies in the Ages Survey. The Astrophysical Journal. 2009;696 :2206-2219.

Date Published:

May 1, 2009

Abstract:

We combine IR, optical, and X-ray data from the overlapping, 9.3deg2 NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey, AGN and Galaxy EvolutionSurvey (AGES), and XBoötes Survey to measure the X-ray evolution of6146 normal galaxies as a function of absolute optical luminosity,redshift, and spectral type over the largely unexplored redshift range0.1 lsim z lsim 0.5. Because only the closest or brightest of thegalaxies are individually detected in X-rays, we use a stacking analysisto determine the mean properties of the sample. Our results suggest thatX-ray emission from spectroscopically late-type galaxies is dominated bystar formation, while that from early-type galaxies is dominated by acombination of hot gas and active galactic nucleus (AGN) emission. Wefind that the mean star formation and supermassive black hole accretionrate densities evolve like ~(1 + z)3±1, in agreementwith the trends found for samples of bright, individually detectablestarburst galaxies and AGN. Our work also corroborates the results ofmany previous stacking analyses of faint source populations, withimproved statistics.

Notes:

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