The Impact of Dust in Host Galaxies on Quasar Luminosity Functions

Abstract

We have investigated effects of dust attenuation on quasar luminosity functions using a semi-analytic galaxy formation model combined with a large cosmological N-body simulation. We estimate the dust attenuation of quasars self-consistently with that of galaxies by considering the dust in their host bulges. We find that the luminosity of the bright quasars is strongly dimmed by the dust attenuation, about 2 mag in the B-band. Assuming the empirical bolometric corrections for active galactic nuclei (AGNs) by Marconi et al., we find that this dust attenuation is too strong to explain the B-band and X-ray quasar luminosity functions simultaneously. We consider two possible mechanisms that weaken the dust attenuation. As such a mechanism, we introduce a time delay for AGN activity, that is, gas fueling to a central black hole starts some time after the beginning of the starburst induced by a major merger. The other is the anisotropy in the dust distribution. We find that in order to make the dust attenuation of the quasars negligible, either the gas accretion into the black holes has to be delayed at least three times the dynamical timescale of their host bulges or the dust covering factor is as small as 0.1.

arXiv comment5 pages, 4 figures, 1 tables. Accepted for publication by MNRAS Letters

References in corpus (31)

• Seven-Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Cosmological Interpretation
• The Dust Content and Opacity of Actively Star-Forming Galaxies
• A Fundamental Relation Between Supermassive Black Holes and Their Host Galaxies
• The Demography of Massive Dark Objects in Galaxy Centres
• Energy input from quasars regulates the growth and activity of black holes and their host galaxies
• Hierarchical Galaxy Formation
• On the Black Hole Mass - Bulge Mass Relation
• Local Supermassive Black Holes, Relics of Active Galactic Nuclei and the X-ray Background
• Revisiting the Scaling Relations of Black Hole Masses and Host Galaxy Properties
• A Unified Model for the Evolution of Galaxies and Quasars
• Cosmological Evolution of the Hard X-ray AGN Luminosity Function and the Origin of the Hard X-ray Background
• Toward the Standard Population Synthesis Model of the X-Ray Background: Evolution of X-Ray Luminosity and Absorption Functions of Active Galactic Nuclei Including Compton-Thick Populations
• The Chandra Deep Field South: Optical Spectroscopy I
• Black Holes in Galaxy Mergers: Evolution of Quasars
• The Cosmic Evolution of Hard X-ray Selected Active Galactic Nuclei
• Absorption Properties and Evolution of Active Galactic Nuclei
• The 2dF-SDSS LRG and QSO Survey: the QSO luminosity function at 0.4<z<2.6
• The MORGANA model for the rise of galaxies and active nuclei
• The 2dF QSO Redshift Survey - V. The 10k catalogue
• Optical spectroscopy and X-ray detections of a sample of quasars and AGN selected in the mid-infrared from two Spitzer wide-area surveys
• The evolution of AGN across cosmic time: what is downsizing?
• Effects of AGN feedback on LCDM galaxies
• Origin of the anti-hierarchical growth of black holes
• Modeling the cosmological co-evolution of supermassive black holes and galaxies: I. BH scaling relations and the AGN luminosity function
• Why X-ray--Selected AGN Appear Optically Dull
• Active Galactic Nuclei In Cosmological Simulations - I. Formation of black holes and spheroids through mergers
• Numerical Galaxy Catalog -I. A Semi-analytic Model of Galaxy Formation with N-body simulations
• Quasars and galaxy formation
• Spectral and morphological properties of quasar hosts in SPH simulations of AGN feeding by mergers
• Anti-hierarchical evolution of the Active Galactic Nucleus space density in a hierarchical universe
• AGN Reddening and Ultraviolet Extinction Curves from Hubble Space Telescope Spectra

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Subaru High-z Exploration of Low-Luminosity Quasars (SHELLQs) III. Star formation properties of the host galaxies at $z\gtrsim 6$ studied with ALMA
• Luminous Quasars Do Not Live in the Most Overdense Regions of Galaxies at z~4
• The New Numerical Galaxy Catalog (${\nu }^2$GC): An Updated Semi-analytic Model of Galaxy and AGN with Large Cosmological N-body Simulation
• The New Numerical Galaxy Catalogue (ν^2 GC): Properties of Active Galactic Nuclei and Their Host Galaxies
• Theoretical reevaluations of the black hole mass - bulge mass relation - I. Effect of the seed black hole mass
• Quasar clustering in a galaxy and quasar formation model based on ultra high-resolution N-body simulations
• Imprints of the super-Eddington accretion on the quasar clustering
• Quantifying the effect of field variance on the H$\alpha$ luminosity function with the New Numerical Galaxy Catalogue (${\nu }^2$GC)