Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010aas...21537302s&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #215, #373.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.581
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
We use quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR5 sample with virial black hole mass estimates (from Shen et al., 2008, 62185 objects) to explore the black hole mass - luminosity (M-L) plane for quasars as a function of redshift. The quasar locus in the 2-D M-L plane show more complex, and surprising, features than can be seen in either 1-D projection: the luminosity function or the mass function. We find (1) in each Δz=0.2 bin over the range 0.2 < z < 2.0, while low-mass quasars reach up to their Eddington luminosity, high-mass quasars fall short of their Eddington luminosities by a factor of ten or more; (2) the rapid cut-off of the locus near LEdd limits the statistical uncertainty in virial mass estimates to < 0.15 dex, notably smaller than the 0.4 dex previously estimated; (3) there is a dearth of high-mass quasars at low Eddington ratio (< 0.02 LEdd, which limits quasar 'turn-off' timescales; (4) quasars in the highest 0.2 dex of mass at each z have turned off by the next Δz=0.2 bin, implying e-folding times of 0.7 -- 3.1 Gyr (109 -- 1010 M&sun;), implying a more highly synchronized demise than would be expected from the dynamics of their host galaxies. We use the M-L plane to limit evolutionary tracks for the evolution of individual quasar masses and luminosities as a function of time.
Elvis Martin
Steinhardt Charles L.
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