Decreased specific star formation rates in AGN host galaxies

We investigate the location of an ultra-hard X-ray selected sample of active galactic nuclei (AGN) from the Swift BurstAlert Telescope (BAT) catalogue with respect to themain sequence (MS) of star-forming galaxies using Herschel-based measurements of the star formation rate (SFR) and M-*'s from Sloan Digital Sky Survey photometry where the AGN contribution has been carefully removed. We construct the MS with galaxies from the Herschel Reference Survey and Herschel Stripe 82 Survey using the exact same methods to measure the SFR and M-* as the Swift/BAT AGN. We find that a large fraction of the Swift/BAT AGN lie below the MS indicating decreased specific SFR (sSFR) compared to non-AGN galaxies. The Swift/BAT AGN are then compared to a high-mass galaxy sample (CO Legacy Database for GALEX Arecibo SDSS Survey, COLD GASS), where we find a similarity between the AGN in COLD GASS and the Swift/BATAGN. Both samples of AGN lie firmly between star-forming galaxies on the MS and quiescent galaxies far below the MS. However, we find no relationship between the X-ray luminosity and distance from the MS. While the morphological distribution of the BAT AGN is more similar to star-forming galaxies, the sSFR of each morphology is more similar to the COLD GASS AGN. The merger fraction in the BAT AGN is much higher than the COLD GASS AGN and star-forming galaxies and is related to distance from the MS. These results support a model in which bright AGN tend to be in high-mass star-forming galaxies in the process of quenching which eventually starves the supermassive black hole itself.