Black-hole masses, accretion rates and hot- and cold-mode accretion in radio galaxies at z~1

Abstract

Understanding the evolution of accretion activity is fundamental to our understanding of how galaxies form and evolve over the history of the Universe. We analyse a complete sample of 27 radio galaxies which includes both high-excitation (HEGs) and low excitation galaxies (LEGs), spanning a narrow redshift range of 0.9 < z < 1.1 and covering a factor of ~1000 in radio luminosity. Using data from the Spitzer Space Telescope combined with ground-based optical and near-infrared imaging, we show that the host galaxies have masses in the range of 10.7 < log (M /M_sun) < 12.0 with HEGs and LEGs exhibiting no difference in their mass distributions. We also find that HEGs accrete at significantly higher rates than LEGs, with the HEG/LEG division lying at an Eddington ratio of ~0.04, which is in excellent agreement with theoretical predictions of where the accretion rate becomes radiatively inefficient, thus supporting the idea of HEGs and LEGs being powered by different modes of accretion. Our study also shows that at least up to L_151MHz ~3x10^27 W /Hz /sr, HEGs and LEGs are indistinguishable in terms of their radio properties. From this result we infer that, at least for the lower radio luminosity range, another factor besides accretion rate must play an important role in the process of triggering jet activity.

arXiv comment22 pages, 33 figures, 7 tables, accepted for publication in MNRAS on 25 November 2014

References in corpus (73)

• Maps of Dust IR Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and CMBR Foregrounds
• Stellar population synthesis at the resolution of 2003
• The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Unified Schemes for Radio-Loud Active Galactic Nuclei
• A Fundamental Relation Between Supermassive Black Holes and Their Host Galaxies
• The Demography of Massive Dark Objects in Galaxy Centres
• The many lives of active galactic nuclei: cooling flows, black holes and the luminosities and colours of galaxies
• A Relationship Between Nuclear Black Hole Mass and Galaxy Velocity Dispersion
• Evolutionary population synthesis: models, analysis of the ingredients and application to high-z galaxies
• On the Black Hole Mass - Bulge Mass Relation
• Advection-Dominated Accretion: Underfed Black Holes and Neutron Stars
• Local Supermassive Black Holes, Relics of Active Galactic Nuclei and the X-ray Background
• Advection-Dominated Accretion and the Spectral States of Black Hole X-Ray Binaries: Application to Nova Muscae 1991
• Spectral Energy Distributions and Multiwavelength Selection of Type 1 Quasars
• A Systematic Study of Radio-Induced X-ray Cavities in Clusters, Groups, and Galaxies
• The Centers of Early-Type Galaxies with HST. IV. Central Parameter Relations
• On the fundamental dichotomy in the local radio-AGN population: accretion, evolution, and host galaxy properties
• AGN Dusty Tori: I. Handling of Clumpy Media
• The cosmological evolution of quasar black-hole masses
• Quasars, their host galaxies, and their central black holes
• The emission line - radio correlation for radio sources using the 7C Redshift Survey
• Measuring the black hole masses of high redshift quasars
• Stellar Population Diagnostics of Elliptical Galaxy Formation
• Hot and cold gas accretion and feedback in radio-loud active galaxies
• Super-massive Black Hole Demography: the Match between the Local and Accreted Mass Functions
• The VISTA Deep Extragalactic Observations (VIDEO) Survey
• Excitation of Activity in Galaxies by Minor Mergers
• Dust Reddening in SDSS Quasars
• An optical spectroscopic survey of the 3CR sample of radio galaxies with z<0.3. II. Spectroscopic classes and accretion modes in radio-loud AGN
• The Massive Hosts of Radio Galaxies Across Cosmic Time
• Ongoing and co-evolving star formation in zCOSMOS galaxies hosting Active Galactic Nuclei
• Turbulence and Particle Heating in Advection-Dominated Accretion Flows
• Near-infrared imaging and the K-z relation for radio galaxies in the 7C Redshift Survey
• The properties of the X-ray holes in the intracluster medium of the Perseus cluster
• On the evolution of the black hole:spheroid mass ratio
• Spitzer Observations of 3C Quasars and Radio Galaxies: Mid-Infrared Properties of Powerful Radio Sources
• The Colour-Magnitude Relation as a Constraint on the Formation of Rich Cluster Galaxies
• A sample of 6C radio sources designed to find objects at redshift > 4: III --- imaging and the radio galaxy K-z relation
• A first sample of faint radio sources with virtually complete redshifts: I. Infrared images, the Hubble diagram, and the alignment effect
• HST, radio and infrared observations of 28 3CR radio galaxies at redshift z ~ 1: I. The observations
• An X-ray survey of the 2Jy sample. I: is there an accretion mode dichotomy in radio-loud AGN?
• Radio Jets in Galaxies with Actively Accreting Black Holes: new insights from the SDSS
• The Magnetorotational Instability in a Collisionless Plasma
• The mass-metallicity gradient relation of early-type galaxies
• A sample of radio galaxies spanning three decades in radio luminosity - I. The host-galaxy properties and black-hole masses
• Implications for unified schemes from the quasar fraction and emission-line luminosities in radio-selected samples
• A sample of 6C radio sources with virtually complete redshifts. II - optical spectroscopy
• Evidence for a maximum jet efficiency for the most powerful radio galaxies
• A sample of 6C radio sources designed to find objects at redshift > 4: II --- spectrophotometry and emission line properties
• Observational constraints on the spin of the most massive black holes from radio observations
• Thermal-infrared imaging of 3C radio galaxies at z~1
• Optical spectroscopy of two overlapping, flux-density-limited samples of radio sources in the North Ecliptic Cap, selected at 38 MHz and 151 MHz
• Radio-quiet quasar environments at 0.5 < z < 0.8
• Deep spectroscopy of distant 3CR radio galaxies: the data
• Evidence for a large fraction of Compton-thick quasars at high redshift
• Near- and mid-infrared photometry of high-redshift 3CR sources
• Millimetre observations of a sample of high-redshift obscured quasars
• B_gg revisited: The environments of low-excitation radio galaxies and unified models
• The environments of z~1 Active Galactic Nuclei at 3.6um
• The role of the accretion disk, dust, and jets in the IR emission of low-luminosity AGN
• The cosmological consequence of an obscured AGN population on the radiation efficiency
• The M_BH-M_star relation of obscured AGNs at high redshift
• The TOOT Survey: status and early results
• Particle Heating by Nonlinear Alfvenic Turbulence in ADAFs
• Evidence of different star formation histories for high- and low-luminosity radio galaxies
• The evolution of the Fundamental Plane of radio galaxies from z~0.5 to the present day
• No evidence of "gray" dust from composite quasar spectra
• The TexOx-1000 redshift survey of radio sources I: the TOOT00 region
• Hubble Space Telescope Near Infrared Snapshot Survey of 3CR radio source counterparts III: Radio galaxies and quasars in context
• Deviations from passive evolution - star formation and the UV excess in z~1 radio galaxies
• HST and UKIRT imaging observations of z ~ 1 6C radio galaxies - I. The data
• A new search for distant radio galaxies in the Southern hemisphere -- II. 2.2 micron imaging
• The cosmic spin of the most massive black holes

Cited by in corpus (21)

• GAMA/WiggleZ: The 1.4GHz radio luminosity functions of high- and low-excitation radio galaxies and their redshift evolution to z=0.75
• The link between accretion mode and environment in radio-loud active galaxies
• LOFAR-Boötes: Properties of high- and low-excitation radio galaxies at $0.5<z<2.0$
• Accretion mode versus radio morphology in the LOFAR Deep Fields
• The clustering and bias of radio-selected AGN and star-forming galaxies in the COSMOS field
• The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: measuring radio galaxy bias through cross-correlation with lensing
• The Far-Infrared Radio Correlation at low radio frequency with LOFAR/H-ATLAS
• Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): The 325 MHz Radio Luminosity Function of AGN and Star Forming Galaxies
• A deep / wide 1-2 GHz snapshot survey of SDSS Stripe 82 using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in a compact hybrid configuration
• Radio-AGN Feedback: When the Little Ones were Monsters
• A Study of High-redshift AGN Feedback in SZ Cluster Samples
• The Stripe 82 1-2 GHz Very Large Array Snapshot Survey: host galaxy properties and accretion rates of radio galaxies
• A new sample of southern radio galaxies: Host galaxy masses and star-formation rates
• The faint source population at 15.7 GHz - III. A high-frequency study of HERGs and LERGs
• Comparison of hard X-ray spectra of luminous radio galaxies and their radio-quiet counterparts
• Observational evidence that positive and negative AGN feedback depends on galaxy mass and jet power
• On the efficiency of jet production in FR II radio galaxies and quasars
• The black hole and host galaxy growth in an isolated $z\sim 6$ QSO observed with ALMA
• FR-type radio sources at 3 GHz VLA-COSMOS: Relation to physical properties and large-scale environment
• Black Hole Mass Accretion Rates and Efficiency Factors for over 750 AGN and Multiple GBH
• Hosts and environments: a (large-scale) radio history of AGN and star-forming galaxies