Environmental dependence of AGN activity in the SDSS main galaxy sample

We investigate the role of small-scale and large-scale environments in triggering nuclear activity of the local galaxies using a volume-limited sample with $M_r$ < -19.5 and 0.02 < z < 0.0685 from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 7. To fix the mass of the supermassive black hole in its host galaxy, we limit the central velocity dispersion of the sample galaxies. The active galactic nuclei (AGN) host sample is composed of Type II AGNs identified with flux ratios of narrow emission lines with S/N > 6. In this study, we find that the AGN fraction of late-type host galaxies are commonly larger than of early type galaxies. The AGN fraction of host galaxy with late-type nearest neighbor starts to increase as the host galaxy approaches the virial radius of the nearest neighbor (about a few hundred kpc scale). Our result may support the idea that the hydrodynamic interaction with the nearest neighbor plays an important role in triggering the nuclear activity of galaxy. The early-type galaxies in high density regions show decline of AGN activity compared to ones in lower density regions, whereas the direction of the environmental dependence of AGN activity for late-type galaxies is rather opposite. We also find that the environmental dependence of star formation rate is analogous to one of AGN activity except in the high density region.