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Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) have been detected in the centers of most nearby massive galaxies. Galaxies today are the products of billions of years of galaxy mergers, but also billions of years of SMBH activity as active galactic…
Galaxy mergers are believed to play an important role in triggering rapid supermassive black hole (SMBH) growth. As merging nuclei approach each other, the physical properties of the participating galaxies and the associated SMBH growth are…
Galaxy mergers are expected to have a profound influence on the star formation histories of galaxies. It is generally expected that mergers are the main drivers of galaxy mass growth through the accretion of mass and the triggering of new…
Galaxy major mergers are a potential mechanism for triggering active galactic nuclei (AGN) activity, but their role remains debated, particularly beyond the local Universe. We aim to shed light on the merger-AGN connection at $z=0.5$-$2$,…
We present a study of the incidence of active galactic nucleus (AGN) in a sample of major merging systems at 0.3<z<2.5. Galaxies in this merger sample have projected separations between 3 to 15 kpc and are selected from the CANDELS/3D-HST…
During galaxy mergers, gas and dust is driven towards the centers of merging galaxies, triggering enhanced star formation and supermassive black hole (SMBH) growth. Theory predicts that this heightened activity peaks at SMBH separations…
Galaxy mergers are a key driver of galaxy formation and evolution, including the triggering of AGN and star formation to a still unknown degree. We thus investigate the impact of galaxy mergers on star formation and AGN activity using a…
Galaxy mergers are likely to play a role in triggering active galactic nuclei (AGN), but the conditions under which this process occurs are poorly understood. In Paper I, we constructed a sample of spatially offset X-ray AGN that represent…
The question of whether galaxy mergers are linked to the triggering of active galactic nuclei (AGN) continues to be a topic of considerable debate. The issue can be broken down into two distinct questions: 1) Can galaxy mergers trigger AGN?…
Models of galaxy formation invoke the major merger of gas-rich progenitor galaxies as the trigger for significant phases of black hole growth and the associated feedback that suppresses star formation to create red spheroidal remnants.…
Aims. The fueling and feedback of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) are important in understanding the co-evolution between black holes and host galaxies. Mergers are thought to have the capability to bring gas inwards and ignite nuclear…
The co-evolution of galaxies and the supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at their centers via hierarchical galaxy mergers is a key prediction of $\Lambda$CDM cosmology. As gas and dust are funneled to the SMBHs during the merger, the SMBHs…
Galaxy-galaxy mergers and close interactions have long been regarded as a viable mechanism for channeling gas toward the central supermassive black holes (SMBHs) of galaxies which are triggered as active galactic nuclei (AGNs). AGN pairs,…
It has long been known that galaxy interactions are associated with enhanced star formation. In a companion paper, we explored this connection by applying a variety of statistics to SDSS data. In particular, we showed that specific star…
The kinematic disturbances associated with major galaxy mergers are known to produce gas inflows, which in turn may trigger accretion onto the supermassive black holes (SMBH) of the participant galaxies. While this effect has been studied…
Galaxy mergers have been shown to trigger AGN in the nearby universe, but the timescale over which this process happens remains unconstrained. The Multi-Model Merger Identifier (MUMMI) machine vision pipeline has been demonstrated to…
We investigate the connection between galaxy--galaxy mergers and enhanced black hole (BH) growth using the cosmological hydrodynamical EAGLE simulation. We do this via three methods of analysis, investigating: the merger fraction of AGN,…
Galaxy mergers represent a fundamental physical process under hierarchical structure formation, but their role in triggering AGNs is still unclear. We aim to investigate the merger-AGN connection using state-of-the-art observations and…
Many theoretical and observational studies have suggested that galaxy mergers may trigger enhanced star formation or active galactic nuclei (AGN) activity. We present an analysis of merging and nonmerging galaxies from $0.2 \leq z \leq 3$…
Mergers of galaxies are thought to cause significant gas inflows to the inner parsecs, which can activate rapid accretion onto supermassive black holes (SMBHs), giving rise to Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). During a significant fraction of…