http://arxiv.org/abs/2001.11573
Studies investigating the relationship between star formation rate (SFR) and AGN power often rely on averaging techniques — such as stacking — to incorporate information from non-detections. However, averages, and especially means, can be strongly affected by outliers and can therefore give a misleading indication of the “typical” case. Recently, a number of studies have taken a step further by binning their sample in terms of AGN power, and investigating how the SFR distribution differs between these bins. These bin thresholds are often weakly motivated, and binning implicitly assumes that sources within the same bin have similar (or even identical) properties. In this paper, we investigate whether the main sequence-normalised SFR (i.e., starburstiness, $R_{\rm MS}$) distribution changes continuously as a function of AGN power, using a hierarchical Bayesian model that completely removes the need to bin. In doing so, we find strong evidence that the $R_{\rm MS}$ distribution changes with AGN power, such that higher X-ray luminosity AGNs have a tighter physical connection to the star forming process than lower luminosity AGNs.
L. Grimmett, J. Mullaney, E. Bernhard, et. al.
Mon, 3 Feb 20
42/46
Comments: 11 pages, 4 figures, submitted to MNRAS, comments welcome