The Luminosity Dependence of Quasar Clustering

Abstract

We investigate the luminosity dependence of quasar clustering, inspired by numerical simulations of galaxy mergers that incorporate black hole growth. These simulations have motivated a new interpretation of the quasar luminosity function. In this picture, the bright end of the quasar luminosity function consists of quasars radiating nearly at their peak luminosities, while the faint end consists mainly of very similar sources, but at dimmer phases in their evolution. We combine this model with the statistics of dark matter halos that host quasar activity. We find that, since bright and faint quasars are mostly similar sources seen in different evolutionary stages, a broad range in quasar luminosities corresponds to only a narrow range in the masses of quasar host halos. On average, bright and faint quasars reside in similar host halos. Consequently, we argue that quasar clustering should depend only weakly on luminosity. This prediction is in qualitative agreement with recent measurements of the luminosity dependence of the quasar correlation function (Croom et al. 2005) and the galaxy-quasar cross-correlation function (Adelberger & Steidel 2005). Future precision clustering measurements from SDSS and 2dF, spanning a large range in luminosity, should provide a strong test of our model.

arXiv comment9 pages, 4 figures, submitted to ApJ

References in corpus (49)

• Simulating the joint evolution of quasars, galaxies and their large-scale distribution
• A Fundamental Relation Between Supermassive Black Holes and Their Host Galaxies
• A Relationship Between Nuclear Black Hole Mass and Galaxy Velocity Dispersion
• Energy input from quasars regulates the growth and activity of black holes and their host galaxies
• The slope of the black-hole mass versus velocity dispersion correlation
• Statistical Properties of X-ray Clusters: Analytic and Numerical Comparisons
• Modeling feedback from stars and black holes in galaxy mergers
• A Unified, Merger-Driven Model for the Origin of Starbursts, Quasars, the Cosmic X-Ray Background, Supermassive Black Holes and Galaxy Spheroids
• Ellipsoidal collapse and an improved model for the number and spatial distribution of dark matter haloes
• The Relation between Black Hole Mass, Bulge Mass, and Near-Infrared Luminosity
• Gasdynamics and Starbursts in Major Mergers
• Local Supermassive Black Holes, Relics of Active Galactic Nuclei and the X-ray Background
• An analytic model for the spatial clustering of dark matter haloes
• In the Beginning: The First Sources of Light and the Reionization of the Universe
• A Unified Model for the Evolution of Galaxies and Quasars
• An excursion set model of hierarchical clustering: Ellipsoidal collapse and the moving barrier
• Power Spectra for Cold Dark Matter and its Variants
• Black Holes, Galaxy Formation, and the M_BH-sigma Relation
• Black holes in galaxy mergers: The formation of red elliptical galaxies
• The age dependence of halo clustering
• How Many Galaxies Fit in a Halo? Constraints on Galaxy Formation Efficiency from Spatial Clustering
• Constraining Galaxy Formation and Cosmology with the Conditional Luminosity Function of Galaxies
• Beyond the Bulge: a Fundamental Relation Between Supermassive Black Holes and Dark Matter Halos
• Black Holes in Galaxy Mergers: Evolution of Quasars
• The 2dF QSO Redshift Survey - I. The Optical QSO Luminosity Function
• Hubble Space Telescope Images of a Sample of Twenty Nearby Luminous Quasars
• Self-Regulated Growth of Supermassive Black Holes in Galaxies as the Origin of the Optical and X-ray Luminosity Functions of Quasars
• High-Redshift Quasars Found in Sloan Digital Sky Survey Commissioning Data IV: Luminosity Function from the Fall Equatorial Stripe Sampl
• A Physical Model for the Origin of Quasar Lifetimes
• Cooling flows and quasars: II. Detailed models of feedback modulated accretion flows
• Quasar Clustering and the Lifetime of Quasars
• A comparative HST imaging study of the host galaxies of radio-quiet quasars, radio-loud quasars and radio galaxies: Paper I
• Binary Quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: Evidence for Excess Clustering on Small Scales
• Cosmic Evolution of Quasar Clustering: Implications for the Host Haloes
• First Measurement of the Clustering Evolution of Photometrically-Classified Quasars
• Determining the Properties and Evolution of Red Galaxies from the Quasar Luminosity Function
• Constraining the Lifetime of Quasars from their Spatial Clustering
• The Redshift Evolution of the 2-8 keV X-ray Luminosity Function
• Black hole growth and activity in a LambdaCDM Universe
• A Physical Model for the Luminosity Function of High-Redshift Quasars
• Luminosity-Dependent Quasar Lifetimes: A New Interpretation of the Quasar Luminosity Function
• The Luminosity Function of QSO Host Galaxies
• Luminosity-Dependent Quasar Lifetimes: Reconciling the Optical and X-ray Quasar Luminosity Functions
• The Clustering of Galaxies around Quasars
• Damped Lyman alpha systems and disk galaxies: number density, column density distribution and gas density
• Possible Detection of Lyman-alpha Fluorescence from a Damped Lyman Alpha system at Redshift z=2.8
• Calibrating the Galaxy Halo - Black Hole Relation Based on the Clustering of Quasars
• An Optical/Near-Infrared Study of Radio-Loud Quasar Environments I. Methods and z=1-2 Observations
• Pair Correlations and Merger Bias

Cited by in corpus (79)

• A Cosmological Framework for the Co-Evolution of Quasars, Supermassive Black Holes, and Elliptical Galaxies: I. Galaxy Mergers & Quasar Activity
• Direct cosmological simulations of the growth of black holes and galaxies
• Biases in Virial Black Hole Masses: An SDSS Perspective
• Self-Consistent Models of the AGN and Black Hole Populations: Duty Cycles, Accretion Rates, and the Mean Radiative Efficiency
• Clustering of High Redshift ($z\ge 2.9$) Quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Kinematic Structure of Merger Remnants
• The Relation Between Quasar and Merging Galaxy Luminosity Functions and the Merger-Induced Star Formation Rate of the Universe
• Dissipation and Extra Light in Galactic Nuclei: IV. Evolution in the Scaling Relations of Spheroids
• Clustering of Low-Redshift (z <= 2.2) Quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Quasar Clustering from SDSS DR5: Dependences on Physical Properties
• The 2dF-SDSS LRG and QSO Survey: QSO clustering and the L-z degeneracy
• The Evolution of the M-sigma Relation
• The clustering of intermediate redshift quasars as measured by the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey
• Clustering Analyses of 300,000 Photometrically Classified Quasars--I. Luminosity and Redshift Evolution in Quasar Bias
• A Theoretical Interpretation of the Black Hole Fundamental Plane
• Quasars Are Not Light-Bulbs: Testing Models of Quasar Lifetimes with the Observed Eddington Ratio Distribution
• Clustering of intermediate redshift quasars using the final SDSS III-BOSS sample
• A Physical Model for z~2 Dust Obscured Galaxies
• AEGIS: The Clustering of X-ray AGN Relative to Galaxies at z~1
• Binary Quasars at High Redshift I: 24 New Quasar Pairs at z ~ 3-4
• Modeling the cosmological co-evolution of supermassive black holes and galaxies: I. BH scaling relations and the AGN luminosity function
• Luminosity and redshift dependent quasar clustering
• Observational Evidence for the Co-evolution of Galaxy Mergers, Quasars, and the Blue/Red Galaxy Transition
• Cross-Correlation of SDSS DR7 Quasars and DR10 BOSS Galaxies: The Weak Luminosity Dependence of Quasar Clustering at z~0.5
• The Demography of Super-Massive Black Holes: Growing Monsters at the Heart of Galaxies
• The spatial clustering of X-ray selected AGN in the XMM-COSMOS field
• The Co-Formation of Spheroids and Quasars Traced in their Clustering
• Modeling the cosmological co-evolution of supermassive black holes and galaxies: II. The clustering of quasars and their dark environment
• The real-space clustering of luminous red galaxies around z<0.6 quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• A Simple Model for Quasar Demographics
• Supermassive Black Holes in the Hierarchical Universe: A General Framework and Observational Tests
• The Star-Forming Molecular Gas in High Redshift Submillimeter Galaxies
• The History and Morphology of Helium Reionization
• A simple model to link the properties of quasars to the properties of dark matter halos out to high redshift
• Eight-Dimensional Mid-Infrared/Optical Bayesian Quasar Selection
• Do We Expect Most AGN to Live in Disks?
• Are Most Low-Luminosity AGN Really Obscured?
• Clustering, Bias and the Accretion Mode of X-ray selected AGN
• Bayesian High-Redshift Quasar Classification from Optical and Mid-IR Photometry
• Very small-scale clustering of quasars from a complete quasar lens survey
• Three Lyman-alpha emitting galaxies within a quasar proximity zone at z=5.8
• Photo-heating and the fate of hard photons during the reionisation of HeII by quasars
• QSO-LRG 2-Point Cross-Correlation Function and Redshift-Space Distorions
• The Halo Occupation Distribution of Active Galactic Nuclei
• The Nature of CO Emission From z~6 Quasars
• The Line-of-Sight Proximity Effect and the Mass of Quasar Host Halos
• Supermassive Black Holes and Their Environments
• Machine Learning Applied to the Reionization History of the Universe in the 21 cm Signal
• Measuring large-scale structure with quasars in narrow-band filter surveys
• Quasar Clustering in Cosmological Hydrodynamic Simulations: Evidence for mergers
• Black hole clustering and duty cycles in the Illustris simulation
• A Constraint on Quasar Clustering at z=5 from a Binary Quasar
• The 2QDES Pilot : The luminosity and redshift dependence of quasar clustering
• Early Black Holes in Cosmological Simulations: Luminosity Functions and Clustering Behaviour
• Constraints on black hole duty cycles and the black hole-halo relation from SDSS quasar clustering
• "Little red dots" cannot reside in the same dark matter halos as comparably luminous unobscured quasars
• The clustering amplitude of X-ray selected AGN at z=0.8: Evidence for a negative dependence on accretion luminosity
• Constraining AGN triggering mechanisms through the clustering analysis of active black holes
• Clustering of Intermediate Luminosity X-ray selected AGN at z~3
• Quasar-Galaxy Clustering through Projected Galaxy Counts at z=0.6-1.2
• Comparing Simple Quasar Demographics Models
• Evidence for Merger-Driven Activity in the Clustering of High Redshift Quasars
• Helium Reionization Simulations. I. Modeling Quasars as Radiation Sources
• AGN Outflows and the Matter Power Spectrum
• A Mixture of LBG Overdensities in the Fields of Three $6<z<7$ Quasars: Implications for the Robustness of Photometric Selection
• Quasar clustering in a galaxy and quasar formation model based on ultra high-resolution N-body simulations
• Predictions of Quasar Clustering: Redshift, Luminosity and Selection Dependence
• Measuring the luminosity and virial black hole mass dependence of quasar-galaxy clustering at z ~ 0.8
• Quasars as a tracer of large-scale structures in the distant universe
• Estimates for the impact of Ultraviolet Background fluctuations on galaxy clustering measurements
• The Halo Occupation Distribution of Black Holes: Dependence on Mass
• A Halo Occupation Interpretation Of Quasars At $z\sim 1.5$ Using Very Small Scale Clustering Information
• Compatibility of the Large Quasar Groups with the Concordance Cosmological Model
• Linking X-ray AGN with dark matter halos: a model compatible with AGN luminosity function and large-scale clustering properties
• Do all QSOs have the same black hole mass?
• On merger bias and the clustering of quasars
• Clustering, Cosmology and a New Era of Black Hole Demographics -- I. The Conditional Luminosity Function of Active Galactic Nuclei
• Measurements of quasar proximity zones with the Ly$\alpha$ forest of DESI Y1 quasars
• Investigation of homogeneity and matter distribution on large scales using large quasar groups