SSDSS IV MaNGA - Properties of AGN host galaxies

TL;DR

This study characterizes 98 AGN host galaxies from the MaNGA survey, revealing their morphological, stellar, and gas properties, and suggests they are in a transitional phase of star formation quenching from inside-out.

Contribution

It provides a detailed comparison of AGN hosts with non-active galaxies, highlighting their properties and evidence of ongoing star formation quenching.

Findings

AGN hosts are mainly early-type or early-spirals.

They are more massive and compact than non-active galaxies.

Star formation quenching occurs from inside-out in these galaxies.

Abstract

We present here the characterization of the main properties of a sample of 98 AGN host galaxies, both type-II and type-I, in comparison with those of about 2700 non-active galaxies observed by the MaNGA survey. We found that AGN hosts are morphologically early-type or early-spirals. For a given morphology AGN hosts are, in average, more massive, more compact, more central peaked and rather pressurethan rotational-supported systems. We confirm previous results indicating that AGN hosts are located in the intermediate/transition region between star-forming and non-star-forming galaxies (i.e., the so-called green valley), both in the ColorMagnitude and the star formation main sequence diagrams. Taking into account their relative distribution in terms of the stellar metallicity and oxygen gas abundance and a rough estimation of their molecular gas content, we consider that these galaxies are in the process of halting/quenching the star formation, in an actual transition between both groups. The analysis of the radial distributions of the starformation rate, specific star-formation rate, and molecular gas density shows that the quenching happens from inside-out involving both a decrease of the efficiency of the star formation and a deficit of molecular gas. All the intermediate data-products used to derive the results of our analysis are distributed in a database including the spatial distribution and average properties of the stellar populations and ionized gas, published as a Sloan Digital Sky Survey Value Added Catalog being part of the 14th Data Release: http://www.sdss.org/dr14/manga/manga-data/manga-pipe3d-value-added-catalog/