The triggering of local AGN and their role in regulating star formation
Sugata Kaviraj, Stanislav S. Shabala, Adam T. Deller, Enno, Middelberg

TL;DR
This study investigates how local AGN are triggered and their influence on star formation, revealing that merger-driven AGN are common in early-type galaxies and tend to appear after star formation has declined, thus not promptly regulating it.
Contribution
It provides the first detailed analysis of the triggering mechanisms of local AGN and their delayed role in star formation regulation in nearby galaxies.
Findings
Radio AGN are more common in early-type galaxies.
AGN are typically triggered several dynamical timescales after star formation begins to decline.
Merger-driven AGN do not strongly suppress star formation.
Abstract
We explore the processes that trigger local AGN and the role of these AGN in regulating star formation, using ~350 nearby galaxies observed by the mJy Imaging VLBA Exploration at 20cm (mJIVE) survey. The >10^7 K brightness temperature required for an mJIVE detection cannot be achieved via star formation alone, allowing us to unambiguously detect nearby radio AGN and study their role in galaxy evolution. Radio AGN are an order of magnitude more common in early-type galaxies (ETGs) than in their late-type counterparts. The VLBI-detected ETGs in this study have a similar stellar mass distribution to their undetected counterparts, are typically not the central galaxies of clusters and exhibit merger fractions that are significantly higher than in the average ETG. This suggests that these radio AGN (which have VLBI luminosities >10^22 W Hz^-1) are primarily fuelled by mergers, and not by…
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