Related papers: The X-ray View of Merger-Induced AGN Activity at L…
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…
Major mergers between galaxies are predicted to fuel their central supermassive black holes (SMBHs), particularly after coalescence. However, determining the prevalence of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) in mergers remains a challenge,…
We investigate the role of galaxy mergers in triggering AGN in the nearby Universe. Our analysis is based on a sample of 79 post-merger remnant galaxies with deep X-ray observations from Chandra/XMM-Newton capable of detecting a…
Interactions between galaxies are predicted to cause gas inflows that can potentially trigger nuclear activity. Since the inflowing material can obscure the central regions of interacting galaxies, a potential limitation of previous optical…
Galaxy mergers are transformative events that can cause gaseous inflows capable of triggering active galactic nuclei (AGN). Previous studies of AGN in simulations have mainly focused on major interactions (i.e. between approximately equal…
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…
Observations and theoretical simulations suggest that a significant fraction of merger-triggered accretion onto supermassive black holes is highly obscured, particularly in late-stage galaxy mergers, when the black hole is expected to grow…
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…
Active galactic nuclei (AGN), particularly the most luminous AGN, are commonly assumed to be triggered through major mergers, however observational evidence for this scenario is mixed. To investigate any influence of galaxy mergers on AGN…
It is not yet clear what triggers the activity of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), but galaxy merging has been suspected to be one of the main mechanisms fuelling the activity. Using deep optical images taken at various ground-based…
For over 60 years, the scientific community has studied actively growing central super-massive black holes (active galactic nuclei -- AGN) but fundamental questions on their genesis remain unanswered. Numerical simulations and theoretical…
We present an analysis of the instantaneous supermassive black hole (SMBH) accretion rates in a collection of 1563 post-merger galaxies drawn from the IllustrisTNG simulation. Our sample consists of galaxies that have experienced a merger…
We investigate the simultaneous triggering of active galactic nuclei (AGN) in merging galaxies, using a large suite of high-resolution hydrodynamical simulations. We compute dual-AGN observability time-scales using bolometric, X-ray, and…
In order to investigate the effects of galaxy mergers throughout the interaction sequence, we present a study of 10,800 galaxies in close pairs and a smaller sample of 97 post-mergers identified in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We find that…
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…
We present the identification and analysis of an unbiased sample of AGN that lie within the local galaxy population. Using the MPA-JHU catalogue (based on SDSS DR8) and 3XMM DR7 we define a parent sample of 25,949 local galaxies ($z \leq…
Galaxy mergers have long been proposed as a mechanism for funneling gas toward galactic centres, potentially triggering accretion onto supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and igniting active galactic nuclei (AGN). While simulations often…
The merger of two or more galaxies can enhance the inflow of material from galactic scales into the close environments of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), obscuring and feeding the supermassive black hole (SMBH). Both recent simulations and…
There is an ongoing debate concerning the driver of nuclear activity in galaxies, with AGN either being triggered by major or minor galactic mergers or, alternatively, through secular processes like cooling gas accretion and/or formation of…
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…