Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2011-05-16
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
30 pages, 16 figures, and 2 tables. Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. A high-resolution version is availa
Scientific paper
We introduce the Mass-Excitation (MEx) diagnostic to identify active galactic nuclei (AGN) in galaxies at intermediate redshift. In the absence of near-infrared spectroscopy, necessary to use traditional nebular line diagrams at z>0.4, we demonstrate that combining [OIII]5007/Hbeta and stellar mass successfully distinguishes between star formation and AGN emission. The MEx classification scheme relies on a novel probabilistic approach splitting galaxies into sub-categories with more confidence than alternative high-z diagnostic diagrams. It recognizes that galaxies near empirical boundaries on traditional diagrams have an uncertain classification and thus a non-zero probability of belonging to more than one category. An outcome of this work is a system of statistical weights that can be used to compute global properties of galaxy samples. We apply the MEx diagram to 2,812 galaxies at 0.3
Alexander David M.
Dickinson Mark
Juneau Stephanie
Salim Samir
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