Local Environmental Effects on AGN Activities

The local environmental effects on the active galactic nucleus(AGN) activity has been studied by many authors, but there is still controversy. We performed statistical analysis for nearby(0.01 < z < 0.05) volume limited(Mr < -19) sample via visual inspection based on Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release7. We visually inspect around 50,000 galaxy images to find peculiar objects which show not only ongoing merging features and tidal features, but also post merging features like shell or ring structures. We found that the frequency of AGN host galaxies is at least 2 times higher among peculiar galaxies than non-peculiar galaxies, and this trend is still visible when galaxy properties such as color or stellar mass are fixed. Furthermore, L[OIII] of peculiar galaxies is found to be more increased than those of normal galaxies. The majority of the most luminous AGN hosts show peculiar feature, which indicates that the luminous AGN galaxies may be the result of the local environmental effects. In addition, the enhancement of L[OIII] in peculiar galaxies is more significant for bluer galaxies, which implies that AGN activity is enhanced effectively when gas is available. In order to ensure our results, we also checked it for a smaller subsample with 2 magnitude deeper monochromatic images provided by SDSS Stripe82 database, and found consistent results. Overall, the results of this study tell us that the local environment of galaxies affects the frequency as well as the strength of AGN activity.