Black hole growth and starburst activity at z = 0.6-4 in the Chandra Deep Field South. Host galaxies properties of obscured AGN

TL;DR

This study investigates the properties of obscured AGN and their host galaxies at redshifts 0.6-4, revealing their massive, star-forming hosts and the evolution of AGN activity with stellar mass and redshift.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of obscured AGN host galaxies in the CDFS, including refined source associations and insights into their star formation and black hole accretion properties.

Findings

Host galaxies are all massive (M_* > 10^{10} M_sun).

50% of hosts are actively star-forming in dusty environments.

AGN fraction increases with stellar mass, reaching ~30% at z > 1.

Abstract

The co-evolution of host galaxies and the active black holes which reside in their centre is one of the most important topics in modern observational cosmology. Here we present a study of the properties of obscured Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) detected in the CDFS 1Ms observation and their host galaxies. We limited the analysis to the MUSIC area, for which deep K-band observations obtained with ISAAC@VLT are available, ensuring accurate identifications of the counterparts of the X-ray sources as well as reliable determination of photometric redshifts and galaxy parameters, such as stellar masses and star formation rates. In particular, we: 1) refined the X-ray/infrared/optical association of 179 sources in the MUSIC area detected in the Chandra observation; 2) studied the host galaxies observed and rest frame colors and properties. We found that X-ray selected (L_X>10^{42} erg s^{-1}) AGN show Spitzer colors consistent with both AGN and starburst dominated infrared continuum; the latter would not have been selected as AGN from infrared diagnostics. The host galaxies of X-ray selected obscured AGN are all massive (M_*>10^{10} M_sun) and, in 50% of the cases, are also actively forming stars (1/SSFR<t_{Hubble}) in dusty environments. The median L/LEdd value of the active nucleus is between 2% and 10% depending on the assumed M_{BH}/M_{*} ratio. Finally, we found that the X-ray selected AGN fraction increases with the stellar mass up to a value of ~30% at z>1 and M_*>3x10^{11} M_sun, a fraction significantly higher than in the local Universe for AGN of similar luminosities.