Multi-wavelength properties of Type 1 and Type 2 AGN Host Galaxies in the Chandra-COSMOS Legacy Survey

Hyewon Suh, Francesca Civano, Guenther Hasinger, Elisabeta Lusso, Stefano Marchesi, Andreas Schulze, Masato Onodera, David J. Rosario, David B. Sanders

Published 2019-02-08Version 1

We investigate the multi-wavelength properties of host galaxies of 3701 X-ray-selected active galactic nuclei (AGNs) out to z~5 in the Chandra-COSMOS Legacy Survey. Thanks to the extensive multi-wavelength photometry available in the COSMOS field, we derive AGN luminosities, host stellar masses, and star formation rates (SFRs) via a multi-component SED fitting technique. Type 1 and Type 2 AGNs follow the same intrinsic Lx-L6um relation, suggesting that mid-infrared emission is a reasonably good measure of the AGN accretion power regardless of obscuration. We find that there is a strong increase in Type 1 AGN fraction toward higher AGN luminosity, possibly due to the fact that Type 1 AGNs tend to be hosted by more massive galaxies. The AGN luminosity and SFR are consistent with an increase toward high stellar mass, while both the Mstellar-dependence is weaker towards the high-mass end, which could be interpreted as a consequence of quenching both star formation and AGN activity in massive galaxies. AGN host galaxies tend to have SFRs that are consistent with normal star-forming galaxies, independent of AGN luminosities. We confirm that black hole accretion rate and SFR are correlated up to z~5, when forming stars. The majority (~73%) of our AGN sample are faint in the far-infrared, implying that the moderate-luminosity AGNs seem to be still active after the star formation is suppressed. It is not certain whether AGN activity plays a role in quenching the star formation. We conclude that both AGN activity and star formation might be more fundamentally related to host stellar mass.