Supermassive Black Holes in the Hierarchical Universe: A General Framework and Observational Tests

Abstract

(Abridged) We present a simple framework for the growth and evolution of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the hierarchical structure formation paradigm. In our model, black hole accretion is triggered during major mergers (mass ratio>~0.3) between host dark matter halos. The successive evolution of quasar luminosities follows a universal light curve form: an initial exponential growth at constant Eddington ratio of order unity until it reaches the peak luminosity, followed by a power-law decay. Assuming that the peak luminosity correlates with the post-merger halo mass, we convolve the light curve with the triggering rate of quasar activity to predict the quasar luminosity function (LF). Our model reproduces the observed LF at 0.5<z<4.5 for the full luminosity ranges probed by current optical and X-ray surveys. Our model reproduces both the observed redshift evolution and luminosity dependence of the linear bias of quasar/AGN clustering. Due to the scatter between instantaneous luminosity and halo mass, quasar/AGN clustering weakly depends on luminosity at low to intermediate luminosities; but the linear bias rises rapidly with luminosity at the high luminosity end and at high redshift. In our model, the Eddington ratio distribution is roughly log-normal, which broadens and shifts to lower mean values from high luminosity quasars (L_bol>~10^46 erg s^-1) to low luminosity AGNs (L_bol<~ 10^45 erg s^-1), in good agreement with observations.

Matched to the accepted version; ApJ in press

References in corpus (31)

• A Cosmological Framework for the Co-Evolution of Quasars, Supermassive Black Holes, and Elliptical Galaxies: I. Galaxy Mergers & Quasar Activity
• An Observational Determination of the Bolometric Quasar Luminosity Function
• Biases in Virial Black Hole Masses: An SDSS Perspective
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Catalog IV. Fifth Data Release
• Clustering of High Redshift ($z\ge 2.9$) Quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• A fitting formula for the merger timescale of galaxies in hierarchical clustering
• The Nearly Universal Merger Rate of Dark Matter Haloes in Lambda-CDM Cosmology
• The MORGANA model for the rise of galaxies and active nuclei
• The Radio-Loud Fraction of Quasars is a Strong Function of Redshift and Optical Luminosity
• The 2dF-SDSS LRG and QSO Survey: QSO clustering and the L-z degeneracy
• The black hole mass -- stellar velocity dispersion correlation: bulges versus pseudobulges
• Clustering Analyses of 300,000 Photometrically Classified Quasars--I. Luminosity and Redshift Evolution in Quasar Bias
• Black Holes in Pseudobulges and Spheroidals: A Change in the Black Hole-Bulge Scaling Relations at Low Mass
• Evidence for Merger Remnants in Early-Type Host Galaxies of Low-Redshift QSOs
• The VVDS type-1 AGN sample: The faint end of the luminosity function
• Luminosity and redshift dependent quasar clustering
• Clustering Analyses of 300,000 Photometrically Classified Quasars--II. The Excess on Very Small Scales
• Quasar Clustering at $25\kpch$ from a Complete Sample of Binaries
• The Clustering of Massive Halos
• The Small-Scale Environment of Quasars
• The Luminosity Function of high-redshift QSOs - A combined analysis of GOODS and SDSS
• Simulating Subhalos at High Redshift: Merger Rates, Counts, and Types
• On the inconsistency between the black hole mass function inferred from M_bh-sigma and M_bh-L correlation
• Constraints on the correlation between QSO luminosity and host halo mass from high-redshift quasar clustering
• Low accretion rates at the AGN cosmic downsizing epoch
• A Spectroscopic Survey of Faint Quasars in the SDSS Deep Stripe: I. Preliminary Results from the Co-added Catalog
• Bulge and Halo Kinematics Across the Hubble Sequence
• AGN Environments in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey I: Dependence on Type, Redshift, and Luminosity
• Eddington ratios of faint AGN at intermediate redshift: Evidence for a population of half-starved black holes
• Multi-mass schemes for collisionless N-body simulations
• Do broad absorption line quasars live in different environments from ordinary quasars?

Cited by in corpus (19)

• A Catalog of Quasar Properties from SDSS DR7
• Host galaxies of luminous z$\sim$0.6 quasars: Major mergers are not prevalent at the highest AGN luminosities
• The cosmic growth of the active black hole population at 1<z<2 in zCOSMOS, VVDS and SDSS
• Clustering properties of moderate luminosity X-ray selected Type 1 and Type 2 AGN at z~3
• AGN and their host galaxies in the local Universe: two mass independent Eddington ratio distribution functions characterize black hole growth
• The Chandra COSMOS Legacy survey: the z>3 sample
• The Chandra COSMOS Legacy Survey: Clustering of X-ray selected AGN at 2.9<z<5.5 using photometric redshift Probability Distribution Functions
• On Constraining the Growth History of Massive Black Holes via Their Distribution on the Spin-Mass Plane
• Driving the Growth of the Earliest Supermassive Black Holes with Major Mergers of Host Galaxies
• Comparing Simple Quasar Demographics Models
• A New Model for Dark Matter Halos Hosting Quasars
• The Black Hole Mass Function Across Cosmic Times II. Heavy Seeds and (Super)Massive Black Holes
• Measuring the luminosity and virial black hole mass dependence of quasar-galaxy clustering at z ~ 0.8
• Episodic activities of supermassive black holes at redshift $z\le 2$: driven by mergers?
• On the Evolution of High-Redshift Active Galactic Nuclei
• Capability of Quasar Selection by Combining the SCUSS and SDSS Observations
• Probing the roles of orientation and multi-scale gas distributions in shaping the obscuration of Active Galactic Nuclei through cosmic time
• Tidal disruption event rates across cosmic time: forecasts for LSST, Roman, and JWST and their constraints on the supermassive black hole mass function
• The dependence of the fraction of radio luminous quasars on redshift and its theoretical implications