Supermassive Black Holes in Deep Multiwavelength Surveys

Abstract

In recent years deep X-ray and infrared surveys have provided an efficient way to find accreting supermassive black holes, otherwise known as active galactic nuclei (AGN), in the young universe. Such surveys can, unlike optical surveys, find AGN obscured by high column densities of gas and dust. In those cases, deep optical data show only the host galaxy, which can then be studied in greater detail than in unobscured AGN. Some years ago the hard spectrum of the X-ray "background" suggested that most AGN were obscured. Now GOODS, MUSYC, COSMOS and other surveys have confirmed this picture and given important quantitative constraints on AGN demographics. Specifically, we show that most AGN are obscured at all redshifts and the amount of obscuration depends on both luminosity and redshift, at least out to redshift z~2, the epoch of substantial black holes and galaxy growth. Larger-area deep infrared and hard X-ray surveys will be needed to reach higher redshifts and to probe fully the co-evolution of galaxies and black holes.

To appear in proceedings of "2007 STScI spring symposium: Black Holes", eds. M. Livio & A. M. Koekemoer, Cambridge University Press, submitted. 22 pages, 12 figures

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Cited by in corpus (1)

• Cosmic X-ray Surveys of Distant Active Galaxies: The Demographics, Physics, and Ecology of Growing Supermassive Black Holes