Searching for Ancient Mergers in Early Type Host Galaxies of Classical QSOs

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Scientific paper

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Hst Proposal Id #10421 Agn/Quasars

Scientific paper

Recent HST imaging of QSO host galaxies indicates that at least a large fraction of QSOs reside in seemingly undisturbed elliptical hosts. However, our deep Keck spectroscopy of a sample of these host galaxies indicates that many of these objects were involved in a major starburst episode between 0.6 and 1.6 Gyr ago. We propose to obtain very deep ACS WFC observations of the five hosts in this sample that have the most reliable age determinations to search for fine structure indicative of a past merger event and to test the hypothesis that the elliptical hosts are the products of relatively recent merger events rather than old galaxies which formed at high redshifts. By establishing a firm connection between ancient mergers and the aging starbursts in these classical QSOs, we will be able to estimate the fraction of the total QSO population that results directly from mergers accompanied by massive starbursts and to place constraints on the duty cycle for QSO activity.

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