Galaxy Zoo: Bulgeless galaxies with growing black holes
View/ Open
Author
Simmons, B.
Lintott, C.
Kaviraj, S.
Schawinski, K.
Han, A.
Urry, C.M.
Moran, E.C.
Masters, K.L.
Nichol, R.C.
Willett, K.W.
Bamford, S.P.
Attention
2299/11206
Abstract
The growth of supermassive black holes appears to be driven by galaxy mergers, violent merger-free processes and/or 'secular' processes. In order to quantify the effects of secular evolution on black hole growth, we study a sample of active galactic nuclei (AGN) in galaxies with a calm formation history free of significant mergers, a population that heretofore has been difficult to locate. Here we present an initial sample of 13 AGN in massive (M ≳ 10M) bulgeless galaxies - which lack the classical bulges believed inevitably to result from mergers - selected from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey using visual classifications from Galaxy Zoo. Parametric morphological fitting confirms that the host galaxies lack classical bulges; any contributions from pseudo-bulges are very small (typically