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Cold dust emission from X-ray AGN in the SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey: Dependence on luminosity, obscuration and AGN activity


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Authors

McMahon, RG 
Willott, CJ 
Geach, JE 
Harrison, CM 

Abstract

We study the 850um emission in X-ray selected AGN in the 2 sq-deg COSMOS field using new data from the SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey. We find 19 850um bright X-ray AGN in a high-sensitivity region covering 0.89 sq-deg with flux densities of S850=4-10 mJy. The 19 AGN span the full range in redshift and hard X-ray luminosity covered by the sample - 0.7<z<3.5 and 43.2<log10(LX) <45. We report a highly significant stacked 850um detection of a hard X-ray flux-limited population of 699 z>1 X-ray AGN - S850=0.71+/-0.08mJy. We explore trends in the stacked 850um flux densities with redshift, finding no evolution in the average cold dust emission over the redshift range probed. For Type 1 AGN, there is no significant correlation between the stacked 850um flux and hard X-ray luminosity. However, in Type 2 AGN the stacked submm flux is a factor of 2 higher at high luminosities. When averaging over all X-ray luminosities, no significant differences are found in the stacked submm fluxes of Type 1 and Type 2 AGN as well as AGN separated on the basis of X-ray hardness ratios and optical-to-infrared colours. However, at log10(LX) >44.4, dependences in average submm flux on the optical-to-infrared colours become more pronounced. We argue that these high luminosity AGN represent a transition from a secular to a merger-driven evolutionary phase where the star formation rates and accretion luminosities are more tightly coupled. Stacked AGN 850um fluxes are compared to the stacked fluxes of a mass-matched sample of K-band selected non-AGN galaxies. We find that at 10.5<log10(M*/M0)<11.5, the non-AGN 850um fluxes are 1.5-2x higher than in Type 2 AGN of equivalent mass. We suggest these differences are due to the presence of massive dusty, red starburst galaxies in the K-band selected non-AGN sample, which are not present in optically selected catalogues covering a smaller area.

Description

Keywords

quasars: general, X-rays: galaxies, galaxies: evolution, submillimetre: galaxies

Journal Title

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0035-8711
1365-2966

Volume Title

454

Publisher

Oxford University Press (OUP)
Sponsorship
Science and Technology Facilities Council (ST/K000985/1)
MB, RGM and KEKC acknowledge support from STFC. JEG thanks the Royal Society for a University Research Fellowship. NB and JSD acknowledge the support of the European Research Council via the award of an Advanced Grant, and the contribution of the EC FP7 SPACE project ASTRODEEP (Ref.No: 312725). DMA and CMH acknowledge support from STFC grant ST/I001573/1.