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arXiv · 2207.11801

The Active Galactic Nuclei in the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment Survey (HETDEX) II. Luminosity Function

Chenxu Liu·Karl Gebhardt·Erin Mentuch Cooper·Yechi Zhang·Donald P. Schneider·Robin Ciardullo·Dustin Davis·Daniel J. Farrow·Steven L. Finkelstein·Caryl Gronwall·Gary J. Hill·Lindsay House·Donghui Jeong·Wolfram Kollatschny·Maja Lujan Niemeyer·Sarah Tuttle
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Abstract

We present the LyA 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 (Liu et al. 2022, Paper I). The AGN are selected either by emission-line pairs characteristic of AGN or by single broad emission line, free of any photometric pre-selections (magnitude/color/morphology). The sample consists of 2,346 AGN spanning 1.88 5σ$ confidence at r~26 in the deepest $r$-band images we have searched. The LyA line luminosity ranges from ~10^42.3 to ~10^45.9 erg s^-1. Our LyA LF shows a turnover luminosity with opposite slopes on the bright end and the faint end: The space density is highest at L_LyA^*=10^43.4 erg s^-1. We explore the evolution of the AGN LF over a broader redshift range (0.8<z<3); constructing the rest-frame ultraviolet (UV) LF with the 1450 AA monochromatic luminosity of the power-law component of the continuum ($\rm M_{1450}$) 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-density-evolution (LEDE) model: the turnover luminosity (M_1450^*) increases and the turnover density (Phi^*) decreases with increasing redshift.

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Chenxu Liu, Karl Gebhardt, Erin Mentuch Cooper, Yechi Zhang, Donald P. Schneider, Robin Ciardullo, Dustin Davis, Daniel J. Farrow, Steven L. Finkelstein, Caryl Gronwall, Gary J. Hill, Lindsay House, Donghui Jeong, Wolfram Kollatschny, Maja Lujan Niemeyer, Sarah Tuttle. 2022-07-24. The Active Galactic Nuclei in the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment Survey (HETDEX) II. Luminosity Function. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357%2Fac8054

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