Abstract:
In the cold dark matter model, galaxy interactions and mergers are one of the primary mode of galaxy growth. We occasionally observe active galactic nuclei (AGNs) at the center of galaxies, and one may expect that galaxy interactions drive the gas inflow to the center and trigger the AGN activity. However, previous work does not seem to show a clear connection between galaxy interactions and AGNs. We tackle this issue using high quality data from the HSC survey. Our sample is constructed from SDSS DR14 within a redshift range of 0.01 ≦ z ≦ 0.2. A initial test sample consists of 874 galaxies. We visually classified the galaxies using the HSC images, which have a much higher quality than, e.g., SDSS, and identified galaxies with irregular/disturbed morphologies. In our poster, we discuss the differences in AGN fraction, color distribution, and environment between merger and non-merger galaxies.