The Active Galactic Nuclei in the Hobby–Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment Survey (HETDEX). II. Luminosity Function
Abstract
We present the Lyα 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 2. Approximately 2.6% of the HETDEX AGN are not detected at >5σ confidence at r ∼ 26 in the deepest r-band images we have searched. The Lyα line luminosity ranges from ∼1042.3 to 1045.9 erg s−1. Our Lyα LF shows a turnover luminosity with opposite slopes on the bright end and the faint end: The space density is highest at L Ly α ∗ = 10 43.4 erg s−1. We explore the evolution of the AGN LF over a broader redshift range (0.8 z 1450) from M 1450 ∼ −18 to −27.5. We divide the sample into three redshift bins (z ∼ 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 1450 * 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 (Φ*) decreases with increasing redshift.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Aug 01, 2022
- Source ID
- 10.3847/1538-4357/ac8054
Entities
People
- (the Hetdex Collaboration)
- Caryl Gronwall
- Chenxu Liu
- Daniel J. Farrow
- Donald P. Schneider
- Donghui Jeong
- Dustin Davis
- Erin Mentuch Cooper
- Gary J. Hill
- Karl Gebhardt
- Lindsay House
- Maja Lujan Niemeyer
- Robin Bruce Ciardullo
- Sarah Tuttle
- Steven L. Finkelstein
- W. Kollatschny
- Yechi Zhang
Organizations
- Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate
- National Science Foundation