Tuesday, April 26, 2011, 12:30 pm. Room M-340, 160 Garden St.
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Are IR-Luminous AGN Triggered by Major Mergers?
Dr. Jennifer Donley (STScI)
| High-redshift, heavily obscured AGN can be isolated by selecting IR-luminous sources with high MIR to optical flux ratios. Approximately 30% of these IR-bright AGN, however, are also selected as SMGs, predominantly star-formation powered sources thought to be in the early stages of a major merger. It has therefore been proposed that SMGs and IR-bright AGN represent the early and late stages, respectively, of the major mergers invoked to explain the observed co-evolution of SMBHs and their hosts. I test this hypothesis through an analysis of the IR, X-ray, and morphological properties of these two samples, and present an updated method for selecting samples of luminous obscured AGN in the distant universe. |
