WIDE FIELD MULTIBAND IMAGING OF LOW REDSHIFT QUASAR ENVIRONMENTS

We present photometry of the large-scale environments of a sample of 12 broad line active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with 0.06 < z < 0.37 from deep images in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey u, g, r, and i filters taken with the 90Prime prime focus camera on the Steward Observatory Bok Telescope. We measure galaxy clustering around these AGNs using two standard techniques: correlation amplitude (Bgq) and the two point correlation function. We find average correlation amplitudes for the 10 radio-quiet objects in the sample equal to (9 ± 18, 144 ± 114, −39 ± 56, 295 ± 260) Mpc1.77 in (u, g, r, i), all consistent with the expectation from galaxy clustering. Using a ratio of the galaxy–quasar cross-correlation function to the galaxy autocorrelation function, we calculate the relative bias of galaxies and AGNs, bgq. The bias in the u band, bgq = 3.08 ± 0.51 is larger compared to that calculated in the other bands, but it does not correlate with AGN luminosity, black hole mass, or AGN activity via the luminosity of the [O iii] emission line. Thus ongoing nuclear accretion activity is not reflected in the large scale environments from ∼10 h−1 kpc to ∼0.5 h−1 Mpc and may indicate a non-merger mode of AGN activity and/or a significant delay between galaxy mergers and nuclear activity in this sample of mostly radio-quiet quasars.