• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.41 no.1
• /
• pp.35.3-36
• /
• 2016

We explore the role of bars in AGN-galaxy co-evolution using a volume-limited face-on late-type galaxy sample with $M_r$ < -19.5 and 0.02 < z < 0.055 selected from SDSS DR7. In this study, we investigate how $SFR_{fib}$ as a proxy of gas contents at galactic center (over 1~1.5 kpc bulge scale) and central stellar velocity dispersion, ${\sigma}$, of host galaxies are connected to the bar presence and AGN activity. We find that galaxies are distributed in three distinct regions over the $SFR_{fib}-{\sigma}$ space and the behaviors of their bar fraction ($f_{Bar}$) are clearly different for each region. Galaxies at the AGN dominant region tend to be gas-deficient as $f_{Bar}$ increases and bars are more frequently found in fully-quenched late-type galaxies at the quiescent region, suggesting that bars speed up of the consumption of gas by SF and lead a sudden decline in the central gas. Overall, the bar effects on the AGN activity are positive over the same space except for quiescent galaxies with ${\sigma}$ > $170km\;s^{-1}$. Most significant bar effect on the AGN activity occurs in the less massive galaxies having sufficient gas, whereas the effect on galaxies at the AGN dominant region with higher the AGN fraction is relatively small. We suggest that the bar affect both central SF and AGN activities, but differently for central gas amount and BH (or bulge) mass of galaxies. We also investigate the AGN-bar connection with only pure AGNs and then confirm that they give marginally the same results.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.30 no.2
• /
• pp.447-449
• /
• 2015

Although the link between activity in the nuclei of galaxy and galactic mergers has been under scrutiny for several years, it is still unclear to what extent and for which populations of active galaxies merger-triggered activity is relevant. The environments of AGN allow an indirect probe of the past merger history and future merger probability of these systems, suffering less from sensitivity issues when extended to higher redshifts than traditional morphological studies of AGN host galaxies. Here we present results from our investigation of the environment of radio selected sources out to a redshift z=2. We employ the first data release J-band catalog of the new near-IR Infrared Medium-Deep Survey (IMS), 1.4 GHz radio data from the Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-cm (FIRST) survey and a deep dedicated VLA survey of the VIMOS field, covering a combined total of 20 sq. degrees. At a flux limit of the combined radio catalog of 0.1 mJy, we probe over 8 orders of magnitude of radio luminosity. Using the second closest neighbor density parameters, we test whether active galaxies inhabit denser environments. We find evidence for a sub-population of radio-selected AGN that reside in significantly overdense environments at small scales, although we do not find significant overdensities for the bulk of our sample. We show that radio-AGN in the most underdense environments have vigorous ongoing star formation. We interpret these results in terms of the triggering and fuelling mechanism of radio-AGN.

• The Bulletin of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.44 no.1
• /
• pp.35.4-35.4
• /
• 2019

We have conducted a 22 GHz very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) survey of 281 local (z < 0.05) active galactic nuclei (AGNs) selected from the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT) 70-month ultra hard X-ray (14-195 keV) catalog. The main goal is to investigate the relation between the strengths of black hole accretion and the parsec-scale nuclear jet, which is expected to tightly correlate but has not been observationally confirmed yet. The BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey (BASS) provides the least biased AGN sample against obscuration including both Seyfert types, hence it makes an ideal parent sample for studying the nuclear jet properties of an overall AGN population. Using the Korean VLBI Network (KVN), the KVN and VERA Array (KaVA), and the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), we observed 281 objects with a 22 GHz flux > 30 mJy, detecting 11 targets (~4% of VLBI detection rate). This implies that the fraction of X-ray AGNs which are currently ejecting a strong nuclear jet is very small. Although our 11 sources span a wide range of pc-scale morphological types, from compact to complex, they lie on a tight linear relation between accretion luminosity and nuclear jet luminosity. Our finding may indicate that the power of nuclear jet is directly responsible for the amount of black hole accretion. We also have probed the fundamental plane of black hole activity in VLBI scale (e.g., few milli-arcsecond). The results from our high-frequency VLBI radio study support that the change of jet luminosity and size follows what is predicted by the AGN evolution scenario based on the Eddington ratio (ƛ$_{Edd}$) - column density ($N_H$) plane, proposed by a previous study.

• Journal of The Korean Astronomical Society
• /
• v.47 no.6
• /
• pp.235-253
• /
• 2014

Intensity interferometry, based on the Hanbury Brown-Twiss effect, is a simple and inexpensive method for optical interferometry at microarcsecond angular resolutions; its use in astronomy was abandoned in the 1970s because of low sensitivity. Motivated by recent technical developments, we argue that the sensitivity of large modern intensity interferometers can be improved by factors up to approximately 25 000, corresponding to 11 photometric magnitudes, compared to the pioneering Narrabri Stellar Interferometer. This is made possible by (i) using avalanche photodiodes (APD) as light detectors, (ii) distributing the light received from the source over multiple independent spectral channels, and (iii) use of arrays composed of multiple large light collectors. Our approach permits the construction of large (with baselines ranging from few kilometers to intercontinental distances) optical interferometers at the cost of (very) long-baseline radio interferometers. Realistic intensity interferometer designs are able to achieve limiting R-band magnitudes as good as $m_R{\approx}14$, sufficient for spatially resolved observations of main-sequence O-type stars in the Magellanic Clouds. Multi-channel intensity interferometers can address a wide variety of science cases: (i) linear radii, effective temperatures, and luminosities of stars, via direct measurements of stellar angular sizes; (ii) mass-radius relationships of compact stellar remnants, via direct measurements of the angular sizes of white dwarfs; (iii) stellar rotation, via observations of rotation flattening and surface gravity darkening; (iv) stellar convection and the interaction of stellar photospheres and magnetic fields, via observations of dark and bright starspots; (v) the structure and evolution of multiple stars, via mapping of the companion stars and of accretion flows in interacting binaries; (vi) direct measurements of interstellar distances, derived from angular diameters of stars or via the interferometric Baade-Wesselink method; (vii) the physics of gas accretion onto supermassive black holes, via resolved observations of the central engines of luminous active galactic nuclei; and (viii) calibration of amplitude interferometers by providing a sample of calibrator stars.