Nuclear Activity is more prevalent in Star-Forming Galaxies. (arXiv:1302.1202v1 [astro-ph.CO])

Nuclear Activity is more prevalent in Star-Forming Galaxies. (arXiv:1302.1202v1 [astro-ph.CO]):
We explore the question of whether low and moderate luminosity Active
Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) are preferentially found in galaxies that are undergoing
a transition from active star formation to quiescence. This notion has been
suggested by studies of the UV-to-optical colors of AGN hosts, which find them
to be common among galaxies in the so-called "Green Valley", a region of galaxy
color space believed to be composed mostly of galaxies undergoing
star-formation quenching. Combining the deepest current X-ray and Herschel.
PACS far-infrared (FIR) observations of the two Chandra Deep Fields (CDFs) with
redshifts, stellar masses and rest-frame photometry derived from the extensive
and uniform multi-wavelength data in these fields, we compare the rest-frame
U-V color distributions and SFR distributions of AGNs and carefully constructed
samples of inactive control galaxies. The UV-to-optical colors of AGNs are
consistent with equally massive inactive galaxies at redshifts out to z~2, but
we show that such colors are poor tracers of star formation. While the FIR
distributions of both star-forming AGNs and star-forming inactive galaxies are
statistically similar, we show that AGNs are preferentially found in
star-forming host galaxies, or, in other words, AGNs are less likely to be
found in weakly star-forming or quenched galaxies. We postulate that, among
X-ray selected AGNs of low and moderate accretion luminosities, the supply of
cold gas primarily determines the accretion rate distribution of the nuclear
black holes.