Description
A critical prerequisite for both AGN activity, and the formation of new stars in host galaxies, is the availability of gas. Environmental processes in dense environments affect gas reservoirs in ways that are different to the field. The density of cluster members and their relative velocities also depend on the cluster mass. As such, the rates of violent processes will differ in clusters and the field. The relative importance of these processes depends on both the position within, and the mass of, the host galaxy cluster.
X-ray AGN surveys suffer little contamination, low absorption bias and provide direct access to most of the accretion power in the Universe. However, studies of AGN in clusters suffer from small sample sizes. Moreover, X-ray AGN detection has to contend with the diffuse cluster emission.
The Cluster AGN Topography Survey (CATS) is mapping AGN across the electro-magnetic spectrum and determining how their properties depend on their surrounding LSS environments. Targeting ~500 of the most massive galaxy clusters, using >25Ms of Chandra data, and generating a catalogue of ~40,000 X-ray AGN, CATS exceeds previous studies of AGN in massive galaxy cluster environments by an order of magnitude. In this talk I will present the results of the X-ray AGN cluster population evolution in massive galaxy clusters up to z~1.5 and explore how far these techniques can be pushed with Chandra and beyond to trace the evolution of AGN in dense environments from early-times, through the peaks of AGN and SF activity, to the present day.
