IA/U.Lisboa Seminar - Insights into galaxy assembly from star formation in luminous quasars at z>1 - 8 março 2017

There is a deep connection between star formation and AGN activity which profoundly impacts the mass assembly history of galaxies. The nature of the connection however remains controversial, due to, for example, evolution in the AGN and starburst duty cycles, and the obscuring effect of dust. The luminous type 1 quasars are an insightful population to study in this context; accretion rates can be estimated from the UV/optical continuum shape, black hole masses can be estimated from rest-frame UV line properties, and star formation rates can be cleanly estimated from far-infrared imaging from Herschel. Our group has discovered a strong correlation between star formation and accretion rate in type 1 quasars at z>0.5, but only up to a certain star formation rate, above which the correlation appears to vanish. We have also discovered several secondary relations between star formation rates and AGN properties. In this talk I will present these results, and discuss their implications for massive galaxy assembly in the high redshift Universe.