The Active Galactic Nuclei in the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment Survey (HETDEX). II. Luminosity Function

Liu, Chenxu; Gebhardt, Karl; Cooper, Erin Mentuch; Zhang, Yechi; Schneider, Donald P.; Ciardullo, Robin; Davis, Dustin; Farrow, Daniel J.; Finkelstein, Steven L.; Gronwall, Caryl; Hill, Gary J.; House, Lindsay; Jeong, Donghui; Kollatschny, Wolfram; Niemeyer, Maja Lujan und Tuttle, Sarah (2022): The Active Galactic Nuclei in the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment Survey (HETDEX). II. Luminosity Function. In: Astrophysical Journal, Bd. 935, Nr. 2, 132

Abstract

We present the Ly alpha emission line luminosity function (LF) of the active galactic nuclei (AGN) in the first release of the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment Survey (HETDEX) AGN catalog. The AGN are selected either by emission line pairs characteristic of AGN or by a single broad emission line, free of any photometric preselections (magnitude/color/morphology). The sample consists of 2346 AGN spanning 1.88 < z < 3.53, covering an effective area of 30.61 deg(2). Approximately 2.6% of the HETDEX AGN are not detected at >5 sigma confidence at r similar to 26 in the deepest r-band images we have searched. The Ly alpha line luminosity ranges from similar to 10(42.3) to 10(45.9) erg s(-1). Our Ly alpha LF shows a turnover luminosity with opposite slopes on the bright end and the faint end: The space density is highest at L-Ly alpha* = 10(43)(.4) erg s(-1). We explore the evolution of the AGN LF over a broader redshift range (0.8 < z < 3);constructing the rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) LF with the 1450 angstrom monochromatic luminosity of the power-law component of the continuum (M-1450) from M-1450 similar to-18 to -27.5. We divide the sample into three redshift bins (z similar to 1.5, 2.1, and 2.6). In all three redshift bins, our UV LFs indicate that the space density of AGN is highest at the turnover luminosity M-450* with opposite slopes on the bright end and the faint end. The M-1450 LFs in the three redshift bins can be well fit with a luminosity evolution and density evolution model: the turnover luminosity (M-1450*) increases, and the turnover density (Phi*) decreases with increasing redshift.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Fakultät: Physik
• Themengebiete: 500 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik > 530 Physik
• ISSN: 0004-637X
• Sprache: Englisch