Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2002-07-12
Astrophys.J. 582 (2003) 559-573
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
revised version, accepted for publication in the ApJ, emulateapj, 15 pages, 16 figures
Scientific paper
10.1086/344675
We assess models for the assembly of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the center of galaxies that trace their hierarchical build-up far up in the dark halo `merger tree'. We assume that the first `seed' black holes (BHs) formed in (mini)halos collapsing at z=20 from high-sigma density fluctuations. As these pregalactic holes become incorporated through a series of mergers into larger and larger halos, they sink to the center owing to dynamical friction, accrete a fraction of the gas in the merger remnant to become supermassive, form a binary system, and eventually coalesce. The merger history of dark matter halos and associated BHs is followed by cosmological Monte Carlo realizations of the merger hierarchy. A simple model, where quasar activity is driven by major mergers and SMBHs accrete at the Eddington rate a mass that scales with the fifth power of the velocity dispersion, is shown to reproduce the optical LF of quasars in the redshift range 1
Haardt Francesco
Madau Piero
Volonteri Marta
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