Quasar host galaxies in the SDSS Stripe 82

TL;DR

This study analyzes around 400 low-redshift quasars from SDSS Stripe 82, revealing that most host galaxies are luminous, large, and diverse in morphology, with a significant correlation between black hole mass and host luminosity.

Contribution

First large homogeneous dataset of low-redshift quasar hosts from SDSS Stripe 82 enabling detailed morphological and environmental analysis.

Findings

80% of quasars have resolvable host galaxies

Majority of hosts are luminous, large, and either disk or spheroid dominated

Black hole mass correlates with host galaxy luminosity

Abstract

We present first results from our study of the properties of ~400 low redshift (z < 0.5) quasars, based on a large homogeneous dataset derived from the Stripe 82 area of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Data Release 7 (DR7). For this sky region, deep (r~22.4) u,g,r,i,z images are available, up to ~2 mag deeper than standard SDSS images, allowing us to study both the host galaxies and the Mpc-scale environments of the quasars. This sample greatly outnumbers previous studies of low redshift quasar hosts, from the ground or from space. Here we report the preliminary results for the quasar host galaxies. We are able to resolve the host galaxy in ~80 % of the quasars. The quasar hosts are luminous and large, the majority of them in the range between M*-1 and M*-2, and with ~10 kpc galaxy scale-lengths. Almost half of the host galaxies are best fit with an exponential disk, while the rest are spheroid-dominated. There is a reasonable relation between the central black hole mass and the host galaxy luminosity.