A New Model for Dark Matter Halos Hosting Quasars

Abstract

A new model for quasar-hosting dark matter halos, meeting two physical conditions, is put forth. First, significant interactions are taken into consideration to trigger quasar activities. Second, satellites in very massive halos at low redshift are removed from consideration, due to their deficiency of cold gas. We analyze the {\em Millennium Simulation} to find halos that meet these two conditions and simultaneously match two-point auto-correlation functions of quasars and cross-correlation functions between quasars and galaxies at $z=0.5-3.2$. %The found halos have some distinct properties worth noting. The masses of found quasar hosts decrease with decreasing redshift, with the mass thresholds being $[(2-5)\times 10^{12}, (2-5)\times 10^{11}, (1-3)\times 10^{11}]\msun$ for median luminosities of $\sim [10^{46},10^{46},10^{45}]$erg/s at $z=(3.2,1.4,0.53)$, respectively, an order of magnitude lower than those inferred based on halo occupation distribution modeling. In this model quasar hosts are primarily massive central halos at $z\ge 2-3$ but increasingly dominated by lower mass satellite halos experiencing major interactions towards lower redshift. But below $z=1$ satellite halos in groups more massive than $\sim 2\times 10^{13}\msun$ do not host quasars. Whether for central or satellite halos, imposing the condition of significant interactions substantially boosts the clustering strength compared to the total population with the same mass cut. The inferred lifetimes of quasars at $z=0.5-3.2$ of $3-30$Myr are in agreement with observations. Quasars at $z\sim 2$ would be hosted by halos of mass $\sim 5\times 10^{11}\msun$ in this model, compared to $\sim 3\times 10^{12}\msun$ previously thought, which would help reconcile with the observed, otherwise puzzling high covering fractions for Lyman limit systems around quasars.

arXiv comment13 pages, 4 figures, accepted to ApJ Letters

References in corpus (41)

• The Seventh Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Simulating the joint evolution of quasars, galaxies and their large-scale distribution
• Populating a cluster of galaxies - I. Results at z=0
• The Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey of SDSS-III
• On the normalisation of the cosmic star formation history
• New Insight on Galaxy Formation and Evolution from Keck Spectroscopy of the Hawaii Deep Fields
• A Catalog of Quasar Properties from SDSS DR7
• The Fourth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Where are the Baryons?
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Catalog V. Seventh Data Release
• The clustering of galaxies in the SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the Data Release 9 Spectroscopic Galaxy Sample
• The SDSS Quasar Survey: Quasar Luminosity Function from Data Release Three
• Self-Regulated Growth of Supermassive Black Holes in Galaxies as the Origin of the Optical and X-ray Luminosity Functions of Quasars
• Clustering of High Redshift ($z\ge 2.9$) Quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Candidate Type II Quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: I. Selection and Optical Properties of a Sample at 0.3<Z<0.83
• Black hole variability and the star formation-AGN connection: Do all star-forming galaxies host an AGN?
• Quasar Clustering and the Lifetime of Quasars
• Updating quasar bolometric luminosity corrections
• The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Catalog III. Third Data Release
• Binary Quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Evidence for Excess Clustering on Small Scales
• The clustering of massive galaxies at z~0.5 from the first semester of BOSS data
• Cosmic Evolution of Quasar Clustering: Implications for the Host Haloes
• The Evolution of Obscuration in AGN
• A Physical Model for the Luminosity Function of High-Redshift Quasars
• The halo masses and galaxy environments of hyperluminous QSOs at z~2.7 in the Keck Baryonic Structure Survey
• The Demographics of Broad-Line Quasars in the Mass-Luminosity Plane. I. Testing FWHM-Based Virial Black Hole Masses
• Improved measurements of the intergalactic medium temperature around quasars: possible evidence for the initial stages of He-II reionisation at z~6
• Caught in the act: a helium-reionizing quasar near the line of sight to Q0302-003
• Cross-Correlation of SDSS DR7 Quasars and DR10 BOSS Galaxies: The Weak Luminosity Dependence of Quasar Clustering at z~0.5
• A Simple Model for Quasar Demographics
• Supermassive Black Holes in the Hierarchical Universe: A General Framework and Observational Tests
• A Substantial Mass of Cool, Metal-Enriched Gas Surrounding the Progenitors of Modern-Day Ellipticals
• The Halo Occupation Distribution of SDSS Quasars
• The Hubble Sequence in Groups: The Birth of the Early-Type Galaxies
• Detection of the Transverse Proximity Effect: Radiative Feedback from Bright QSOs
• On the Origin of the Hubble Sequence: I. Insights on Galaxy Color Migration from Cosmological Simulations
• Environmentally Driven Global Evolution of Galaxies
• Constraints on Hyperluminous QSO Lifetimes via Fluorescent Lya Emitters at Z~2.7
• The transverse proximity effect in spectral hardness on the line of sight towards HE 2347-4342
• Does the AGN Unified Model Evolve with Redshift? Utilizing the X-ray Background to Predict the Mid-Infrared Emission of AGN
• The case against large intensity fluctuations in the z ~ 2.5 HeII Lyman-alpha forest

Cited by in corpus (15)

• Detecting and Characterizing Young Quasars I: Systemic Redshifts and Proximity Zones Measurements
• Major mergers are not the dominant trigger for high-accretion AGNs at z = 2
• First Spectroscopic Study of a Young Quasar
• The first measurement of the quasar lifetime distribution
• Helium Reionization Simulations. II. Signatures of Quasar Activity on the IGM
• A significant excess in major merger rate for AGNs with the highest Eddington ratios at z<0.2
• Constraining AGN Feedback in Massive Ellipticals with South Pole Telescope Measurements of the Thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect
• Environmental Quenching and Galactic Conformity in the Galaxy Cross-Correlation Signal
• Helium Reionization Simulations. I. Modeling Quasars as Radiation Sources
• Testing Dark Matter Halo Models of Quasars With Thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich Effect
• Revisiting the Extreme Clustering of $z\approx 4$ Quasars with Large Volume Cosmological Simulations
• Clustering, Cosmology and a New Era of Black Hole Demographics -- I. The Conditional Luminosity Function of Active Galactic Nuclei
• Quasi-Stellar Objects acting as potential Strong Gravitational Lenses in the SDSS-III BOSS survey
• Scaling of the 1-halo terms with bias
• Testing Models of Quasar Hosts With Strong Gravitational Lensing by Quasar Hosts