Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Investigating The Agn-Merger Connection Using Close Galaxy Pairs In The Candels Fields, Sean L. Dougherty

Honors Theses

Galaxy mergers are catastrophic events in that they greatly change the properties of the galaxies involved. Observations of the nearby universe suggest that they may also be able to trigger active galactic nuclei (AGN) even prior to the final coalescence, though there is much controversy surrounding this belief, particularly at high redshifts. In order to address this question, we have assembled a large sample of photometric galaxy pairs within the GDS and EGS fields of the CANDELS survey. We use photometric redshift probability distribution functions and the combined redshift probability function to assign probabilities for each projected pair. We incorporate …