Eddington Ratios of Dust-obscured Quasars at $z\lesssim 1$: Evidence Supporting Dust-obscured Quasars as Young Quasars

Abstract

Dust-obscured quasars have been suspected as the intermediate stage galaxies between merger-driven star-forming galaxies and unobscured quasars. This merger-driven galaxy evolution scenario suggests that dust-obscured quasars exhibit higher Eddington ratios (${\lambda }_{\mathrm{Edd}}$) than those of unobscured quasars. However, their high dust obscuration poses challenges to accurately measuring their ${\lambda }_{\mathrm{Edd}}$ using commonly employed bolometric luminosity ($L_{\mathrm{bol}}$) and black hole (BH) mass ($M_{\mathrm{BH}}$) estimators based on the ultraviolet (UV) or optical luminosity. Recently, Kim et al. (2023) established new estimators for $L_{\mathrm{bol}}$ and $M_{\mathrm{BH}}$ based on mid-infrared (MIR) continuum luminosity ($L_{\mathrm{MIR}}$), which are less affected by dust obscuration. These estimators enable the study of a large number of dust-obscured quasars across a wide redshift range. In this study, we measure the ${\lambda }_{\mathrm{Edd}}$ values of 30 dust-obscured quasars at $z\lesssim 1$, the largest sample size to date, using the $L_{\mathrm{MIR}}$-based $L_{\mathrm{bol}}$ and $M_{\mathrm{BH}}$ estimators. Our findings reveal that dust-obscured quasars exhibit significantly higher ${\lambda }_{\mathrm{Edd}}$ values compared to unobscured quasars. Moreover, we confirm that the enhanced ${\lambda }_{\mathrm{Edd}}$ values of dust-obscured quasars maintain consistency across the redshift span of 0 to 1. Our results strongly support the picture that dust-obscured quasars are in the earlier stage than unobscured quasars in the merger-driven galaxy evolutionary track.

15 pages, 13 figures, Accepted for publication in A&A

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