Correlations Between Quasars and Their Host Galaxies with Hyper Suprime-Cam and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Abstract

We investigate host galaxies of quasars and the physical relationships between properties of AGN and their hosts using a sample of 3424 luminous SDSS quasars at redshift 0.2 < z < 1.0. This analysis combines spectral properties, black hole mass, and Eddington ratio of quasars from the SDSS catalog with decomposed images from Hyper Suprime-Cam of quasars and their host galaxies in five broad bands using Lenstronomy. This sample of AGN host galaxy data from HSC allows for analysis at an unprecedented scale relative to previous surveys and HST. We confirm previous findings that the AGN host galaxy population is more massive than average and tends to fall between the blue cloud and red sequence. We consider the color distributions of quasars and their hosts and ultimately find that there is not a correlation, meaning dust-reddened quasars do not appear to be found preferentially in red hosts, or vice-versa. And we evaluate correlations between black hole mass, Eddington ratio, galaxy stellar mass, and galaxy color in the context of an AGN-host sample to ultimately shed light on AGN feedback and the conditions which cause a quasar to shine.