Dark Matter Halos of Luminous Active Galactic Nuclei from Galaxy–Galaxy Lensing with the HSC Subaru Strategic Program

Abstract We assess the dark matter halo masses of luminous active galactic nuclei (AGNs) over the redshift range 0.2–1.2 using galaxy–galaxy lensing based on imaging data from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP). We measure the weak lensing signal of a sample of 48,907 AGNs constructed using HSC and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer photometry. As expected, we find that the lensing mass profile of total AGN sample is consistent with that of massive galaxies ( <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mi>log</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>M</mml:mi> <mml:mo>*</mml:mo> </mml:msub> <mml:mo stretchy="true">/</mml:mo> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>h</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>M</mml:mi> <mml:mo>⊙</mml:mo> </mml:msub> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> <mml:mo>∼</mml:mo> </mml:math> 10.61). Surprisingly, the lensing signal remains unchanged when the AGN sample is split into four host galaxy stellar mass bins. Specifically, we find that the excess surface density of AGNs residing in galaxies with high stellar masses significantly differs from that of the control sample. We further fit a halo occupation distribution model to the data to infer the posterior distribution of parameters including the average halo mass. We find that the characteristic halo mass of the full AGN population lies near the knee ( <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" overflow="scroll"> <mml:mi>log</mml:mi> <mml:mo stretchy="false">(</mml:mo> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>M</mml:mi> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">h</mml:mi> </mml:msub> <mml:mo stretchy="true">/</mml:mo> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>h</mml:mi> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>−</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> <mml:msub> <mml:mi>M</mml:mi> <mml:mo>⊙</mml:mo> </mml:msub> <mml:mo stretchy="false">)</mml:mo> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>12.0</mml:mn> </mml:math> ) of the stellar-to-halo mass relation (SHMR). Illustrative of the results given above, the halo masses of AGNs residing in host galaxies with high stellar masses (i.e., above the knee of the SHMR) fall below the calibrated SHMR while the halo masses of the low stellar mass sample are more consistent with the established SHMR. These results indicate that massive halos with a higher clustering bias tend to suppress AGN activity, probably due to the lack of available gas.