Galaxy Zoo: the effect of bar-driven fuelling on the presence of an active galactic nucleus in disc galaxies

Galloway, Melanie A.
Willett, Kyle W.
Fortson, Lucy F.
Cardamone, Carolin N.
Schawinski, Kevin
Cheung, Edmond
Lintott, Chris J.
Masters, Karen L.
Melvin, Thomas
Simmons, Brooke D.

Publication date

August 2017

Abstract

We study the influence of the presence of a strong bar in disc galaxies which host an active galactic nucleus (AGN). Using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and morphological classifications from the Galaxy Zoo 2 project, we create a volume-limited sample of 19756 disc galaxies at 0.01<z<0.05 which have been visually examined for the presence of a bar. Within this sample, AGN host galaxies have a higher overall percentage of bars (51.8 per cent) than inactive galaxies exhibiting central star formation (37.1 per cent). This difference is primarily due to known effects: that the presence of both AGN and galactic bars is strongly correlated with both the stellar mass and integrated colour of the host galaxy. We control for this effect by ...