The roles of star formation and AGN activity of IRS sources in the HerMES fields

TL;DR

This study investigates how active galactic nuclei (AGN) influence the infrared properties of galaxies and examines the relationship between star formation and AGN activity using spectral analysis of Herschel survey data.

Contribution

It introduces a multi-component spectral synthesis method incorporating IRS spectra to analyze the IR properties of galaxies with AGN and starburst activity, revealing their concurrent occurrence.

Findings

IRS spectra improve galaxy spectral analysis with AGN.

SFR_IR and SFR_PAH correlate differently in AGN and starburst galaxies.

No evidence that AGN presence affects cold dust temperature.

Abstract

In this work we explore the impact of the presence of an active galactic nucleus (AGN) on the mid- and far-infrared (IR) properties of galaxies as well as the effects of simultaneous AGN and starburst activity in these same galaxies. To do this we apply a multi-component, multi-band spectral synthesis technique to a sample of 250 micron selected galaxies of the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey, with IRS spectra available for all galaxies. Our results confirm that the inclusion of the IRS spectra plays a crucial role in the spectral analysis of galaxies with an AGN component improving the selection of the best-fit hot dust model (torus). We find a correlation between the obscured star formation rate (SFR) derived from the IR luminosity of the starburst component, SFR_IR and SFR_PAH, derived from the luminosity of the PAH features, L_PAH, with SFR_FIR taking higher values than SFR_PAH. The correlation is different for AGN- and starburst-dominated objects. The ratio of L_PAH to that of the starburst component, L_PAH/L_SB, is almost constant for AGN-dominated objects but decreases with increasing L_SB for starburst-dominated objects. SFR_FIR increases with the accretion luminosity, L_acc, with the increase less prominent for the very brightest, unobscured AGN-dominated sources. We find no correlation between the masses of the hot and cold dust components. We interpret this as a non-constant fraction of gas driven by the gravitational effects to the AGN while the starburst is ongoing. We also find no evidence of the AGN affecting the temperature of the cold dust component, though this conclusion is mostly based on objects with a non-dominant AGN component. We conclude that our findings do not provide evidence that the presence of AGN affects the star formation process in the host galaxy, but rather that the two phenomena occur simultaneously over a wide range of luminosities.