Fundamental differences in the X-ray accretion properties of low and high-excitation radio galaxies

Abstract

We characterise the accretion rate properties of radio-detected AGN by combining deep radio and X-ray observations of the Bo\"{o}tes field. We used deep international LOFAR telescope observations to identify 2840 radio-AGN across $0.3 < z \leq 2$, divided into samples that are complete in radio luminosity. We further split this sample into four different classes: radio-quiet AGN (RQ-AGN), high-excitation radio galaxies (HERGs), and low-excitation radio galaxies (LERGs) hosted by star-forming (SF-LERGs) and quiescent galaxies (Q-LERGs). Through performing X-ray stacking, we determined the average X-ray luminosities, $L_{\rm{X, 2-10\,keV}}$ and average specific X-ray luminosities, $\lambda_{sL_{X}}$ (X-ray luminosity scaled by the stellar mass; a proxy for the accretion rate). We studied how these X-ray properties depend on radio luminosity, stellar mass, and redshift for each of the four AGN classes. We found that the LERGs, regardless of their star-formation activity, show significantly lower $L_{\rm{X, 2-10\,keV}}$ and $\lambda_{sL_{X}}$ than both HERGs and RQ-AGN across all redshifts. The average X-ray luminosities for the HERGs, RQ-AGN, and SF-LERGs typically increase with redshift, which may be associated with the increased cold gas fractions at earlier times, resulting in more enhanced black hole accretion. The average X-ray luminosities show weak-to-no correlation with radio luminosity at a given redshift, suggesting that the physical processes producing the X-ray and radio emission may not be coupled on spatial and/or temporal scales.