Structural decomposition of merger-free galaxies hosting luminous AGNs

Fahey, Matthew J. and Garland, Izzy L and Simmons, Brooke D and Keel, William C and Shanahan, Jesse and Coil, Alison and Glikman, Eilat and Lintott, Chris J and Masters, Karen L and Moran, Ed and Smethurst, Rebecca J and Géron, Tobias and Thorne, Matthew R (2025) Structural decomposition of merger-free galaxies hosting luminous AGNs. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 537 (4). pp. 3511-3524. ISSN 0035-8711

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Abstract

Active galactic nucleus (AGN) growth in disk-dominated, merger-free galaxies is poorly understood, largely due to the difficulty in disentangling the AGN emission from that of the host galaxy. By carefully separating this emission, we examine the differences between AGNs in galaxies hosting a (possibly) merger-grown, classical bulge, and AGNs in secularly grown, truly bulgeless disk galaxies. We use Galfit to obtain robust, accurate morphologies of 100 disk-dominated galaxies imaged with the Hubble Space Telescope. Adopting an inclusive definition of classical bulges, we detect a classical bulge component in 53.3 ± 0.5 per cent of the galaxies. These bulges were not visible in Sloan Digital Sky Survey photometry, however these galaxies are still unambiguously disk-dominated, with an average bulge-to-total luminosity ratio of 0.1 ± 0.1. We find some correlation between bulge mass and black hole mass for disk-dominated galaxies, though this correlation is significantly weaker in comparison to the relation for bulge-dominated or elliptical galaxies. Furthermore, a significant fraction (≳ 90 per cent) of our black holes are overly massive when compared to the relationship for elliptical galaxies. We find a weak correlation between total stellar mass and black hole mass for the disk-dominated galaxies, hinting that the stochasticity of black hole-galaxy co-evolution may be higher in disk-dominated than bulge-dominated systems.