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AR 16137 (Archival Research)

Tue Nov 5 22:16:20 GMT 2024

Principal Investigator: Allison Kirkpatrick
PI Institution: University of Kansas Center for Research, Inc.
Investigators (xml)

Title: Obscured CANDELS: Disentangling Obscuration around Supermassive Black Holes in the Distant Universe
Cycle: 28

Abstract
Many active galactic nuclei (AGN) in the distant universe (z=1-3) are obscured, although the source of this obscuration is unclear. Obscuration can arise from the AGN torus or from the host galaxy, but distentangling these is difficult. We propose to reanalyse HST ACS and WFC3 images of X-ray selected AGN in the CANDELS legacy survey. We will decompose AGN images into a point source and host galaxy and model the resulting spectral energy distributions to obtain the attenuation in the host and AGN, separately. We will correlate the host and AGN obscuration with galaxy properties SFR, stellar mass, and stellar mass surface density. Our sample spans a wide range of stellar mass (log Mstar = 9.5-12.5 Msun) and X-ray luminosity (log LX = 42 - 45 erg/s), so we will measure whether most AGN in the distant universe go through an obscured phase prior to galaxy quenching.