The Relation between Nuclear Activity and Stellar Mass in Galaxies

TL;DR

This study investigates the relationship between nuclear activity and stellar mass in galaxies, highlighting the importance of stellar mass in understanding the co-evolution of black holes and star formation.

Contribution

It provides new insights into how stellar mass influences the connection between nuclear activity and star formation in galaxy evolution.

Findings

Stellar mass is a key parameter in galaxy nuclear activity.

A proposed evolutionary sequence links star formation and AGN activity.

The study emphasizes the role of stellar mass in galaxy evolution models.

Abstract

The existence of correlations between nuclear properties of galaxies, such as the mass of their central black holes, and larger scale features, like the bulge mass and luminosity, represent a fundamental constraint on galaxy evolution. Although the actual reasons for these relations have not yet been identified, it is widely believed that they could stem from a connection between the processes that lead to black hole growth and stellar mass assembly. The problem of understanding how the processes of nuclear activity and star formation can affect each other became known to the literature as the Starburst-AGN connection. Despite years of investigation, the physical mechanisms which lie at the basis of this relation are known only in part. In this work, we analyze the problem of star formation and nuclear activity in a large sample of galaxies. We study the relations between the properties of the nuclear environments and of their host galaxies. We find that the mass of the stellar component within the galaxies of our sample is a critical parameter, that we have to consider in an evolutionary sequence, which provides further insight in the connection between AGN and star formation processes.