A New Approach to Constraining Properties of Active Galactic Nucleus Host Galaxies by Combining Image and Spectral Energy Distribution Decomposition: Testing upon the MBH–M⋆ Relation

Bibliographic Details
Title: A New Approach to Constraining Properties of Active Galactic Nucleus Host Galaxies by Combining Image and Spectral Energy Distribution Decomposition: Testing upon the MBH–M⋆ Relation
Authors: Haoran Yu, Lulu Fan, Yunkun Han, Weibin Sun, Yihang Zhang, Xuheng Ding, Yongquan Xue
Source: The Astrophysical Journal, Vol 978, Iss 2, p 164 (2025)
Publisher Information: IOP Publishing, 2025.
Publication Year: 2025
Collection: LCC:Astrophysics
Subject Terms: Galaxy masses, Scaling relations, Spectral energy distribution, Active galactic nuclei, Astrophysics, QB460-466
More Details: The outshining light from active galactic nuclei (AGNs) poses significant challenges in studying the properties of AGN host galaxies. To address this issue, we propose a novel approach that combines image decomposition and spectral energy distribution (SED) decomposition to constrain the properties of AGN host galaxies. Image decomposition allows us to disentangle optical flux into AGN and stellar components, thereby providing additional constraints on the SED models to derive a more refined stellar mass. To test the viability of this approach, we obtained a sample of 24 X-ray-selected type I AGNs with redshifts ranging from 0.73 to 2.47. We estimated the stellar masses for our sample and found that our results are generally consistent with earlier estimates based on different methods. Through examining the posterior distribution of stellar masses, we find that our method could derive better-constrained results compared to previous SED decomposition methods. With the derived stellar masses, we further studied the M _BH – M _⋆ relation of our sample, finding a higher intrinsic scatter in the correlation for our entire sample compared to the local quiescent correlation, which could be caused by a few “black hole monsters” in our sample. We propose that, based on our method, future works could extend to larger samples of high-redshift AGN host galaxies, thereby enhancing our understanding of their properties.
Document Type: article
File Description: electronic resource
Language: English
ISSN: 1538-4357
Relation: https://doaj.org/toc/1538-4357
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad9aa3
Access URL: https://doaj.org/article/e52a5253412243c8ba44884fb789505a
Accession Number: edsdoj.52a5253412243c8ba44884fb789505a
Database: Directory of Open Access Journals
More Details
ISSN:15384357
DOI:10.3847/1538-4357/ad9aa3
Published in:The Astrophysical Journal
Language:English