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Evolutionary paths of active galactic nuclei and their host galaxies

Nature Astronomy volume 7, pages 1376–1389 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

The tight correlations between the masses of supermassive black holes (BHs) and the properties of their host galaxies suggest that BHs co-evolve with galaxies. However, what is the link between BH mass (MBH) and the properties of the host galaxies of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in the nearby Universe? We measure stellar masses (M*), colours and structural properties for ~11,500 redshift ≤0.35 broad-line AGNs, nearly 40 times more than that in any previous work, as far as we are aware. We find that early-type and late-type AGNs follow a similar MBH–M* relation. The position of AGNs on the MBH–M* plane is connected with the properties of star formation and BH accretion. Our results unveil the evolutionary paths of galaxies on the MBH–M* plane: objects above the relation tend to evolve more horizontally, with substantial M* growth; objects on the relation move along the local relation; and objects below the relation migrate more vertically, with substantial MBH growth. These trajectories suggest that radiative-mode feedback cannot quench the growth of BHs and their host galaxies for AGNs that lie below the relation, while kinetic-mode feedback barely suppresses long-term star formation for AGNs situated above the relation. This work provides important constraints for numerical simulations and offers a framework for studying the cosmic co-evolution of supermassive BHs and their host galaxies.

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Fig. 1: The relation between MBH and M* for z ≤ 0.35 type 1 AGNs.
Fig. 2: The relation between MBH and M* for z ≤ 0.35 AGNs.
Fig. 3: The relation between MBH and M* for z ≤ 0.35 AGNs.
Fig. 4: Evolutionary paths towards z = 0 of objects on the MBH–M* plane.
Fig. 5: Comparison of the current distribution of low-z AGNs (blue) and the expected distribution (red) when they have evolved to z = 0.

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Data availability

Pan-STARRS1 images are available from the Pan-STARRS1 data archive (https://outerspace.stsci.edu/display/PANSTARRS/Pan-STARRS1+data+archive+home+page). The basic properties of the final AGN sample, the PS1 flux densities and the derived physical properties of the host galaxies are available at https://doi.org/10.12149/101278 (ref. 148).

Code availability

Astropy, dustmaps, LOESS, Matplotlib, Numpy and Scipy are available from the Python Package Index (PyPI) (https://pypi.org/). CIGALE is available at https://cigale.lam.fr/. GALFITM is available at https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/astronomy/megamorph/. linmix is available at https://linmix.readthedocs.io/en/latest/. SExtractor and SWarp are available at https://www.astromatic.net/software/.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (grant no. 2022YFF0503401), the National Science Foundation of China (grant nos. 11721303, 11991052, 12011540375 and 12233001) and the China Manned Space Project (grant nos. CMS-CSST-2021-A04 and CMS-CSST-2021-A06).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Ming-Yang Zhuang & Luis C. Ho

  2. Department of Astronomy, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Ming-Yang Zhuang & Luis C. Ho

  3. Department of Astronomy, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    Ming-Yang Zhuang

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  1. Ming-Yang Zhuang
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Contributions

M.-Y.Z. and L.C.H. developed and discussed the idea. M.-Y.Z. reduced the data, performed the analyses and wrote the paper. L.C.H. revised the paper.

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Correspondence to Ming-Yang Zhuang.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Rest-frame SDSS \({g}^{{\prime} }-{r}^{{\prime} }\) colour [\({({g}^{{\prime} }-{r}^{{\prime} })}_{0}\)] versus stellar mass (M*) for the inactive galaxy sample (red) and AGN sample (blue).

Objects with z < 0.15 are shown in panel (a), and objects with 0.15≤z≤0.35 are shown in panel (b). Contours indicate the distribution of 10%, 30%, 60%, and 90% of the entire sample, respectively. Dots are individual objects located outside the 90% contour. The lower-right corner of each panel shows the typical uncertainties.

Extended Data Fig. 2 The relation between MBH and M* for z≤0.35 type 1 AGNs without smoothing.

Colours represent (a) rest-frame optical colour \({({g}^{{\prime} }-{r}^{{\prime} })}_{0}\), (b) Eddington ratio (λE), and (c) relative Fe II strength. Best-fit relations from ref. 5 for local early-type galaxies (black dashed line), late-type galaxies (black dotted line), and both types combined (black solid line; intrinsic scatter of 0.81 dex indicated as shaded gray region). This figure shows the version of Fig. 2 without smoothing to demonstrate that the trends are still present in the original data.

Extended Data Fig. 3 The relation between MBH and M* for z≤0.35 type 1 AGNs without smoothing and with MBH derived from broad Hα emission with a virial factor f = 4.47.

Colours represent (a) rest-frame optical colour \({({g}^{{\prime} }-{r}^{{\prime} })}_{0}\), (b) Eddington ratio (λE), and (c) relative Fe II strength. Best-fit relations from ref. 5 for local early-type galaxies (black dashed line), late-type galaxies (black dotted line), and both types combined (black solid line; intrinsic scatter of 0.81 dex indicated as shaded gray region). This figure demonstrates that switching to the Hα-based MBH estimator does not qualitatively affect our main conclusions.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Rest-frame SDSS \({g}^{{\prime} }-{r}^{{\prime} }\) colour [\({({g}^{{\prime} }-{r}^{{\prime} })}_{0}\)] versus stellar mass (M*) for AGNs.

AGNs with early-type and late-type morphologies are shown in magenta and green, respectively. Objects with z < 0.15 are shown in panel (a), and objects with 0.15≤z≤0.35 are shown in panel (b). Contours indicate the distribution of 10%, 30%, 60%, and 90% of the entire sample, respectively. Dots are individual objects located outside the 90% contour. The lower-right corner of each panel shows the typical uncertainties.

Extended Data Fig. 5 The relation between MBH and M* for local (z < 0.1) type 2 AGNs.

BH masses are derived from broad emission lines in the near-infrared (see Methods). Their evolution to z = 0 is indicated by the direction and length of each arrow. Best-fit relations from ref. 5 for local early-type galaxies (black dashed line), late-type galaxies (black dotted line), and both types combined (black solid line; intrinsic scatter of 0.81 dex indicated as shaded gray region). Typical uncertainties are shown in the lower-right corner.

Extended Data Fig. 6 Rest-frame optical colour \({({g}^{{\prime} }-{r}^{{\prime} })}_{0}\) versus λE for AGNs.

AGNs with early-type, late-type, and both types combined morphologies are shown in magenta, green, and black, respectively. Contours indicate the distribution of 10%, 30%, 60%, and 90% of the entire sample, respectively. Dots are individual objects located outside the 90% contour. Thick solid and dashed lines represent 50th, 16th, and 84th percentiles of the objects. The Spearman correlation coefficient ρ and p-value are shown in the lower-left corner. Typical uncertainties are shown in the upper-right corner.

Extended Data Fig. 7 The relation between MBH and Mbulge for z≤0.35 AGNs with MBH growth fraction larger than 20%.

Colours represent growth fraction of MBH. Mbulge is predicted from M* with a bulge-to-total ratio of 0.2. We show the best-fit relations from ref. 5 for local early-type galaxies (black dashed line), late-type galaxies (black dotted line), and both types combined (black solid line; intrinsic scatter of 0.81 dex indicated as shaded gray region).

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Tables 1 and 2 and Figs. 1–12.

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Zhuang, MY., Ho, L.C. Evolutionary paths of active galactic nuclei and their host galaxies. Nat Astron 7, 1376–1389 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-023-02051-4

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