2025ApJ...987..112Y

We present the multiwavelength and environmental properties of 37 variability-selected active galactic nuclei (AGNs), including 30 low-luminosity AGNs (LLAGNs), using a high cadence time-domain survey (All-Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae) from a spectroscopic sample of 1218 nearby bright galaxies. We find that high-cadence time-domain surveys uniquely select LLAGNs that do not necessarily satisfy other AGN selection methods, such as X-ray, mid-IR, or BPT methods. In our sample, 3% of them pass the mid-infrared color based AGN selection, 18% pass the X-ray luminosity based AGN selection, and 60% pass the BPT selection. This result is supported by two other LLAGN samples from high-cadence time-domain surveys of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and Palomar Transient Factory, suggesting that the variability selection method from well-sampled light curves can find AGNs that may not be discovered otherwise. These AGNs can have moderate to small variability amplitudes from the accretion disk, but many of them lack strong corona, emission lines from the central engine, or accretion power to dominate the mid-IR emission. The X-ray spectra of a subsample of bright sources are consistent with a power-law model. Upon inspecting the environments of our sample, we find that LLAGNs are more common in denser environments of galaxy clusters in contrast with the trend established in the literature for luminous AGNs at low redshifts, which is broadly consistent with our analysis result for luminous AGNs limited by a smaller sample size. This contrast in environmental properties between LLAGN and luminous AGNs suggests that LLAGNs may have different trigger mechanisms.