Browsing by Author "Xue, Yongquan"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    A magnetar-powered X-ray transient as the aftermath of a binary neutron-star merger
    (2019) Xue, Yongquan; Zheng, X. C.; Li, Y.; Brandt, W. N.; Zhang, Bryna; Luo, Bruce; Zhang, Boce; Bauer, Franz Erik; Sun, H.; Lehmer, B. D.; Wu, Xuefeng; Yang, Guang; Kong, Xu; Li, J. Y.; Sun, M. Y.; Wang, Junxian; Vito, Fabio
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    Exploring Changing-look Active Galactic Nuclei with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey V: First Year Results
    (2024) Zeltyn, Grisha; Trakhtenbrot, Benny; Eracleous, Michael; Yang, Qian; Green, Paul; Anderson, Scott F.; LaMassa, Stephanie; Runnoe, Jessie; Assef, Roberto J.; Bauer, Franz E.; Brandt, W. N.; Davis, Megan C.; Frederick, Sara E.; Fries, Logan B.; Graham, Matthew J.; Grogin, Norman A.; Guolo, Muryel; Hernandez-Garcia, Lorena; Koekemoer, Anton M.; Krumpe, Mirko; Liu, Xin; Martinez-Aldama, Mary Loli; Ricci, Claudio; Schneider, Donald P.; Shen, Yue; Sniegowska, Marzena; Temple, Matthew J.; Trump, Jonathan R.; Xue, Yongquan; Brownstein, Joel R.; Dwelly, Tom; Morrison, Sean; Bizyaev, Dmitry; Pan, Kaike; Kollmeier, Juna A.
    "Changing-look" active galactic nuclei (CL-AGNs) challenge our basic ideas about the physics of accretion flows and circumnuclear gas around supermassive black holes. Using first-year Sloan Digital Sky Survey V (SDSS-V) repeated spectroscopy of nearly 29,000 previously known active galactic nuclei (AGNs), combined with dedicated follow-up spectroscopy, and publicly available optical light curves, we have identified 116 CL-AGNs where (at least) one broad emission line has essentially (dis-)appeared, as well as 88 other extremely variable systems. Our CL-AGN sample, with 107 newly identified cases, is the largest reported to date, and includes similar to 0.4% of the AGNs reobserved in first-year SDSS-V operations. Among our CL-AGNs, 67% exhibit dimming while 33% exhibit brightening. Our sample probes extreme AGN spectral variability on months to decades timescales, including some cases of recurring transitions on surprisingly short timescales (less than or similar to 2 months in the rest frame). We find that CL events are preferentially found in lower-Eddington-ratio (f Edd) systems: Our CL-AGNs have a f Edd distribution that significantly differs from that of a carefully constructed, redshift- and luminosity-matched control sample (Anderson-Darling test yielding p AD approximate to 6 x 10-5; median f Edd approximate to 0.025 versus 0.043). This preference for low f Edd strengthens previous findings of higher CL-AGN incidence at lower f Edd, found in smaller samples. Finally, we show that the broad Mg ii emission line in our CL-AGN sample tends to vary significantly less than the broad H beta emission line. Our large CL-AGN sample demonstrates the advantages and challenges in using multi-epoch spectroscopy from large surveys to study extreme AGN variability and physics.
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    High-quality Extragalactic Legacy-field Monitoring (HELM) with DECam: Project Overview and First Data Release
    (2024) Zhuang, Ming-Yang; Yang, Qian; Shen, Yue; Adamow, Monika; Friedel, Douglas N.; Gruendl, R. A.; Stone, Zachary; Li, Junyao; Liu, Xin; Martini, Paul; Abbott, Timothy M. C.; Anderson, Scott F.; Assef, Roberto J.; Bauer, Franz E.; Bielby, Richard; Brandt, W. N.; Burke, Colin J.; Casares, Jorge; Chen, Yu-Ching; De Rosa, Gisella; Drlica-Wagner, Alex; Dwelly, Tom; Eltvedt, Alice; Alvarez, Gloria Fonseca; Fu, Jianyang; Fuentes, Cesar; Graham, Melissa L.; Grier, Catherine J.; Golovich, Nathan; Hall, Patrick B.; Hartigan, Patrick; Horne, Keith; Koekemoer, Anton M.; Krumpe, Mirko; Li, Jennifer I.; Lidman, Chris; Malik, Umang; Mangian, Amelia; Merloni, Andrea; Ricci, Claudio; Salvato, Mara; Sharp, Rob; Trilling, David E.; Tucker, Brad E.; Wen, Di; Wideman, Zachary; Xue, Yongquan; Yu, Zhefu; Zucker, Catherine
    High-quality Extragalactic Legacy-field Monitoring (HELM) is a long-term observing program that photometrically monitors several well-studied extragalactic legacy fields with the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) imager on the CTIO 4 m Blanco telescope. Since 2019 February, HELM has been monitoring regions within COSMOS, XMM-LSS, CDF-S, S-CVZ, ELAIS-S1, and SDSS Stripe 82 with few-day cadences in the (u)gri(z) bands, over a collective sky area of similar to 38 deg2. The main science goal of HELM is to provide high-quality optical light curves for a large sample of active galactic nuclei (AGNs), and to build decades-long time baselines when combining past and future optical light curves in these legacy fields. These optical images and light curves will facilitate the measurements of AGN reverberation mapping lags, as well as studies of AGN variability and its dependencies on accretion properties. In addition, the time-resolved and coadded DECam photometry will enable a broad range of science applications from galaxy evolution to time-domain science. We describe the design and implementation of the program and present the first data release that includes source catalogs and the first similar to 3.5 yr of light curves during 2019A-2022A.
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    Identification and Characterization of a Large Sample of Distant Active Dwarf Galaxies in XMM-SERVS
    (2023) Zou, Fan; Brandt, W. N.; Ni, Qingling; Zhu, Shifu; Alexander, David M.; Bauer, Franz E.; Chen, Chien-Ting J.; Luo, Bin; Sun, Mouyuan; Vignali, Cristian; Vito, Fabio; Xue, Yongquan; Yan, Wei
    Active dwarf galaxies are important because they contribute to the evolution of dwarf galaxies and can reveal their hosted massive black holes. However, the sample size of such sources beyond the local universe is still highly limited. In this work, we search for active dwarf galaxies in the recently completed XMM-Spitzer Extragalactic Representative Volume Survey (XMM-SERVS). XMM-SERVS is currently the largest medium-depth X-ray survey covering 13 deg(2) in three extragalactic fields, which all have well-characterized multiwavelength information. After considering several factors that may lead to misidentifications, we identify 73 active dwarf galaxies at z < 1, which constitutes the currently largest X-ray-selected sample beyond the local universe. Our sources are generally less obscured than predictions based on the massive-AGN (active galactic nucleus) X-ray luminosity function and have a low radio-excess fraction. We find that our sources reside in environments similar to those of inactive dwarf galaxies. We further quantify the accretion distribution of the dwarf-galaxy population after considering various selection effects and find that it decreases with X-ray luminosity, but redshift evolution cannot be statistically confirmed. Depending on how we define an AGN, the active fraction may or may not show a strong dependence on stellar mass. Their Eddington ratios and X-ray bolometric corrections significantly deviate from the expected relation, which is likely caused by several large underlying systematic biases when estimating the relevant parameters for dwarf galaxies. Throughout this work, we also highlight problems in reliably measuring photometric redshifts and overcoming strong selection effects for distant active dwarf galaxies.
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    Piercing through Highly Obscured and Compton-thick AGNs in the Chandra Deep Fields. I. X-Ray Spectral and Long-term Variability Analyses
    (2019) Li, Junyao; Xue, Yongquan; Sun, Mouyuan; Liu, Teng; Vito, Fabio; Brandt, William N.; Hughes, Thomas M.; Yang, Guang; Tozzi, Paolo; Zhu, Shifu; Zheng, Xuechen; Luo, Bin; Chen, Chien-Ting; Vignali, Cristian; Gilli, Roberto; Shu, Xinwen
    We present a detailed X-ray spectral analysis of 1152 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) selected in the Chandra Deep Fields (CDFs), in order to identify highly obscured AGNs (N-H > 10(23) cm(-2)). By fitting spectra with physical models, 436 (38%) sources with L-X > 10(42) erg s(-1) are confirmed to be highly obscured, including 102 Compton-thick (CT) candidates. We propose a new hardness ratio measure of the obscuration level that can be used to select highly obscured AGN candidates. The completeness and accuracy of applying this method to our AGNs are 88% and 80%, respectively. The observed log N-log S relation favors cosmic X-ray background models that predict moderate (i.e., between optimistic and pessimistic) CT number counts. Nineteen percent (6/31) of our highly obscured AGNs that have optical classifications are labeled as broad-line AGNs, suggesting that, at least for part of the AGN population, the heavy X-ray obscuration is largely a line-of-sight effect, i.e., some high column density clouds on various scales (but not necessarily a dust-enshrouded torus) along our sight line may obscure the compact X-ray emitter. After correcting for several observational biases, we obtain the intrinsic N-H distribution and its evolution. The CT/highly obscured fraction is roughly 52% and is consistent with no evident redshift evolution. We also perform long-term (approximate to 7 yr in the observed frame) variability analyses for 31 sources with the largest number of counts available. Among them, 17 sources show flux variabilities: 31% (5/17) are caused by the change of N-H, 53% (9/17) are caused by the intrinsic luminosity variability, 6% (1/17) are driven by both effects, and 2 are not classified owing to large spectral fitting errors.
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    Piercing through Highly Obscured and Compton-thick AGNs in the Chandra Deep Fields. II. Are Highly Obscured AGNs the Missing Link in the Merger-triggered AGN-Galaxy Coevolution Models?
    (2020) Li, Junyao; Xue, Yongquan; Sun, Mouyuan; Brandt, William N.; Yang, Guang; Vito, Fabio; Tozzi, Paolo; Vignali, Cristian; Comastri, Andrea; Shu, Xinwen; Fang, Guanwen; Fan, Lulu; Luo, Bin; Chen, Chien-Ting; Zheng, Xuechen
    By using a large, highly obscured ( N-H > 10(23) cm(-2)) active galactic nucleus (AGN) sample (294 sources at z similar to 0-5) selected from detailed X-ray spectral analyses in the deepest Chandra.surveys, we explore distributions of these X-ray sources in various optical/infrared/X-ray color-color diagrams and their host-galaxy properties, aiming at characterizing the nuclear obscuration environment and the triggering mechanism of highly obscured AGNs. We find that the refined Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) color-color diagram fails to identify the majority of X-ray-selected, highly obscured AGNs, even for the most luminous sources with log L-X(erg s(-1)) > 44. Over 80% of our sources will not be selected as heavily obscured candidates using the flux ratio of f(24 mu m)/f(R) > 1000 and R - K > 4.5 criteria, implying complex origins and conditions for the obscuring materials that are responsible for the heavy X-ray obscuration. The average star formation rate (SFR) of highly obscured AGNs is similar to that of stellar mass-(M*-) and z-controlled normal galaxies, while a lack of quiescent hosts is observed for the former. Partial correlation analyses imply that highly obscured AGN activity (traced by L-X) appears to be more fundamentally related to M*, and no dependence of N-H on either M* or SFR is detected. Morphology analyses reveal that 61% of our sources have a significant disk component, while only similar to 27% of them exhibit irregular morphological signatures. These findings together point toward a scenario where secular processes (e.g., galacticdisk instabilities), instead of mergers, are most probable to be the leading mechanism that triggers accretion activities of X-ray-selected, highly obscured AGNs.
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    The XMM-SERVS Survey: XMM-Newton Point-source Catalogs for the W-CDF-S and ELAIS-S1 Fields
    (2021) Ni, Qingling; Brandt, W. N.; Chen, Chien-Ting; Luo, Bin; Nyland, Kristina; Yang, Guang; Zou, Fan; Aird, James; Alexander, David M.; Bauer, Franz Erik; Lacy, Mark; Lehmer, Bret D.; Mallick, Labani; Salvato, Mara; Schneider, Donald P.; Tozzi, Paolo; Traulsen, Iris; Vaccari, Mattia; Vignali, Cristian; Vito, Fabio; Xue, Yongquan; Banerji, Manda; Chow, Kate; Comastri, Andrea; Del Moro, Agnese; Gilli, Roberto; Mullaney, James; Paolillo, Maurizio; Schwope, Axel; Shemmer, Ohad; Sun, Mouyuan; Timlin III, John D.; Trump, Jonathan R.
    We present the X-ray point-source catalogs in two of the XMM-Spitzer Extragalactic Representative Volume Survey (XMM-SERVS) fields, W-CDF-S (4.6 deg(2)) and ELAIS-S1 (3.2 deg(2)), aiming to fill the gap between deep pencil-beam X-ray surveys and shallow X-ray surveys over large areas. The W-CDF-S and ELAIS-S1 regions were targeted with 2.3 and 1.0 Ms of XMM-Newton observations, respectively; 1.8 and 0.9 Ms exposures remain after flare filtering. The survey in W-CDF-S has a flux limit of 1.0 x 10(-14) erg cm(-2) s(-1) over 90% of its area in the 0.5-10 keV band; 4053 sources are detected in total. The survey in ELAIS-S1 has a flux limit of 1.3 x 10(-14) erg cm(-2) s(-1) over 90% of its area in the 0.5-10 keV band; 2630 sources are detected in total. Reliable optical-to-IR multiwavelength counterpart candidates are identified for approximate to 89% of the sources in W-CDF-S and approximate to 87% of the sources in ELAIS-S1. A total of 3129 sources in W-CDF-S and 1957 sources in ELAIS-S1 are classified as active galactic nuclei (AGNs). We also provide photometric redshifts for X-ray sources; approximate to 84% of the 3319/2001 sources in W-CDF-S/ELAIS-S1 with optical-to-near-IR forced photometry available have either spectroscopic redshifts or high-quality photometric redshifts. The completion of the XMM-Newton observations in the W-CDF-S and ELAIS-S1 fields marks the end of the XMM-SERVS survey data gathering. The approximate to 12,000 pointlike X-ray sources detected in the whole approximate to 13 deg(2) XMM-SERVS survey will benefit future large-sample AGN studies.
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    X-Ray Spectral Analyses of AGNs from the 7Ms Chandra Deep Field-South Survey: The Distribution, Variability, and Evolutions of AGN Obscuration
    (2017) Liu, Teng; Tozzi, Paolo; Wang, Jun-Xian; Brandt, William N.; Vignali, Cristian; Xue, Yongquan; Schneider, Donald P.; Comastri, Andrea; Yang, Guang; Bauer, Franz Erik