The Drivers of the Decline in Supermassive Black Hole Growth at $z<2$

Abstract

It is well established that cosmic supermassive black hole (SMBH) growth peaks at $z\approx 1.5-2$, followed by a strong decline of $\approx 1-1.5\mathrm{dex}$ toward the present day, with the comoving number density of higher-luminosity active galactic nuclei (AGNs) peaking at higher redshift (referred to as "AGN downsizing"). We leverage the best current measurements of the SMBH accretion distribution, based upon data from nine well-characterized extragalactic fields with a "wedding-cake" design, to investigate and quantify the drivers of the drastic decline in cosmic SMBH growth. The decline in the typical Eddington ratio (${\lambda }_{\mathrm{Edd}}$) of AGNs (decreasing by $\approx 1.35\mathrm{dex}$ from $z\approx 1.5-2$ to $z\approx 0.2$) is the dominant driver for the broad decline in SMBH growth, rather than a shift of accretion activity to less-massive SMBHs. As ${\lambda }_{\mathrm{Edd}}$ decreases toward lower redshift, the primary contributor to the cosmic SMBH accretion density (${\rho }_{\mathrm{BHAR}}$) has shifted from high-${\lambda }_{\mathrm{Edd}}$ AGNs to low-${\lambda }_{\mathrm{Edd}}$ AGNs, even though the latter always dominate the comoving AGN number density at $z<4$. We also find that the decline in SMBH growth toward lower SMBH mass in less-massive galaxies is primarily due to the decreasing outburst luminosity rather than the duty cycle.

arXiv comment17 pages, 7 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (81)

• Coevolution (Or Not) of Supermassive Black Holes and Host Galaxies
• Cosmic Star Formation History
• LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products
• Energy input from quasars regulates the growth and activity of black holes and their host galaxies
• CANDELS: The Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey
• CANDELS: The Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey - The Hubble Space Telescope Observations, Imaging Data Products and Mosaics
• Advection-Dominated Accretion: Underfed Black Holes and Neutron Stars
• Local Supermassive Black Holes, Relics of Active Galactic Nuclei and the X-ray Background
• Hot Accretion Flows Around Black Holes
• The Co-Evolution of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes: Insights from Surveys of the Contemporary Universe
• An Observational Determination of the Bolometric Quasar Luminosity Function
• Cosmological Evolution of the Hard X-ray AGN Luminosity Function and the Origin of the Hard X-ray Background
• Constraining the Low-Mass Slope of the Star Formation Sequence at 0.5<z<2.5
• Relations Between Central Black Hole Mass and Total Galaxy Stellar Mass in the Local Universe
• Present-Day Growth of Black Holes and Bulges: the SDSS Perspective
• Intermediate-Mass Black Holes
• Extragalactic Science, Cosmology and Galactic Archaeology with the Subaru Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS)
• 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
• Luminosity-dependent evolution of soft X-ray selected AGN: New Chandra and XMM-Newton surveys
• Euclid. I. Overview of the Euclid mission
• The Chandra Deep Field-South Survey: 7 Ms Source Catalogs
• The Chandra COSMOS Legacy survey: overview and point source catalog
• How Do Massive Black Holes Get Their Gas?
• Piecing Together the X-ray Background: Bolometric Corrections for Active Galactic Nuclei
• The Cosmic Evolution of Hard X-ray Selected Active Galactic Nuclei
• Bolometric luminosities and Eddington ratios of X-ray selected Active Galactic Nuclei in the XMM-COSMOS survey
• Major Galaxy Mergers Only Trigger the Most Luminous AGN
• The XMM-Newton serendipitous survey IX. The fourth XMM-Newton serendipitous source catalogue
• On the cosmic evolution of the scaling relations between black holes and their host galaxies: Broad Line AGN in the zCOSMOS survey
• Universal bolometric corrections for AGN over 7 luminosity decades
• Cosmic X-ray Surveys of Distant Active Galaxies: The Demographics, Physics, and Ecology of Growing Supermassive Black Holes
• PRIMUS: The dependence of AGN accretion on host stellar mass and color
• Obscuration-dependent evolution of Active Galactic Nuclei
• The impact of angular momentum on black hole accretion rates in simulations of galaxy formation
• Fueling Low-Level AGN Activity Through the Stochastic Accretion of Cold Gas
• Accreting SMBHs in the COSMOS field and the connection to their host galaxies
• COSMOS2020: The Galaxy Stellar Mass Function: the assembly and star formation cessation of galaxies at $0.2<z\le 7.5$
• Color-Magnitude Relations of Active and Non-Active Galaxies in the Chandra Deep Fields: High-Redshift Constraints and Stellar-Mass Selection Effects
• The evolution of AGN across cosmic time: what is downsizing?
• X-rays across the galaxy population - II. The distribution of AGN accretion rates as a function of stellar mass and redshift
• The Demographics of Broad Line Quasars in the Mass-Luminosity Plane II. Black Hole Mass and Eddington Ratio Functions
• The Redshift Evolution of the 2-8 keV X-ray Luminosity Function
• The 2 Ms Chandra Deep Field-North Survey and the 250 ks Extended Chandra Deep Field-South Survey: Improved Point-Source Catalogs
• AEGIS-X: Deep Chandra imaging of the Central Groth Strip
• The Accretion History of AGN I: Supermassive Black Hole Population Synthesis Model
• X-ray constraints on the local supermassive black hole occupation fraction
• No significant evolution of relations between Black hole mass and Galaxy total stellar mass up to z~2.5
• X-rays across the galaxy population - III. The incidence of AGN as a function of star formation rate
• The Demographics of Broad-Line Quasars in the Mass-Luminosity Plane. I. Testing FWHM-Based Virial Black Hole Masses
• Sciences with the 2.5-meter Wide Field Survey Telescope (WFST)
• Detailed Shape and Evolutionary Behavior of the X-ray Luminosity Function of Active Galactic Nuclei
• The cosmic growth of the active black hole population at 1<z<2 in zCOSMOS, VVDS and SDSS
• Linking black-hole growth with host galaxies: The accretion-stellar mass relation and its cosmic evolution
• The NewAthena mission concept in the context of the next decade of X-ray astronomy
• The eROSITA Final Equatorial-Depth Survey (eFEDS): The AGN Catalogue and its X-ray Spectral Properties
• CEERS Key Paper VI: JWST/MIRI Uncovers a Large Population of Obscured AGN at High Redshifts
• The XMM-SERVS survey: new XMM-Newton point-source catalog for the XMM-LSS field
• X-ray spectral analyses of AGNs from the 7Ms Chandra Deep Field-South survey: the distribution, variability, and evolution of AGN's obscuration
• The WISSH Quasars Project III. X-ray properties of hyper-luminous quasars
• X-UDS: The Chandra Legacy Survey of the UKIDSS Ultra Deep Survey Field
• Overview of the Advanced X-ray Imaging Satellite (AXIS)
• Evident black hole-bulge coevolution in the distant universe
• Low accretion rates at the AGN cosmic downsizing epoch
• Heavy X-ray obscuration in the most-luminous galaxies discovered by WISE
• On the cosmic evolution of AGN obscuration and the X-ray luminosity function: XMM-Newton and Chandra spectral analysis of the 31.3 deg${}^2$ Stripe 82X
• SPHEREx: NASA's Near-Infrared Spectrophotmetric All-Sky Survey
• ALMA and HST kiloparsec-scale imaging of a quasar-galaxy merger at $z\approx 6.2$
• Exploring the local black hole mass function below $10^6$ solar masses
• Spectral Energy Distributions in Three Deep-Drilling Fields of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time: Source Classification and Galaxy Properties
• The Incidence of X-ray selected AGN in Nearby Galaxies
• The XMM-SERVS survey: XMM-Newton point-source catalogs for the W-CDF-S and ELAIS-S1 fields
• Eddington ratio Distribution of X-ray selected broad-line AGNs at 1.0<z<2.2
• The evolving AGN duty cycle in galaxies since z$\sim$3 as encoded in the X-ray luminosity function
• The Evolution of M_*/M_BH Between z=2 and z=0
• Mapping the Growth of Supermassive Black Holes as a Function of Galaxy Stellar Mass and Redshift
• AGN X-ray luminosity function and absorption function in the Early Universe ($3\le z\le 6$)
• Piercing through Highly Obscured and Compton-thick AGNs in the Chandra Deep Fields. II. Are Highly Obscured AGNs the Missing Link in the Merger-Triggered AGN-Galaxy Coevolution Models?
• The Most Obscured AGNs in the XMM-SERVS Fields
• Do current X-ray observations capture most of the black-hole accretion at high redshifts?
• The eROSITA Final Equatorial Depth Survey (eFEDS): the hard X-ray selected sample
• Surveys of the Cosmic X-ray Background