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Published April 2024 | Version Published
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TRINITY – III. Quasar luminosity functions decomposed by halo, galaxy, and black hole masses as well as Eddington ratios from z = 0–10

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon University of Arizona
  • 2. ROR icon National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
  • 3. ROR icon Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris
  • 4. ROR icon Johns Hopkins University
  • 5. ROR icon University of Oxford
  • 6. ROR icon Royal Observatory
  • 7. ROR icon University of Leicester
  • 8. ROR icon California Institute of Technology

Abstract

We present the redshift evolution of quasar luminosity functions (QLFs) decomposed by halo mass, galaxy mass, supermassive black hole (SMBH) mass, and Eddington ratio, as well as SMBH/radiative energy output ratios from trinity, a flexible empirical model that self-consistently infers the halo–galaxy–SMBH connection that match observational data. Key findings include: (1) The normalization of quasar luminosity function increases by ∼3–4 dex from z ∼ 10 to z ∼ 4, due to the fast mass build-up of different SMBH populations; (2) From z ∼ 4 to z ∼ 1, less massive galaxies and SMBHs make up bigger and bigger fractions of QLFs, due to the active galactic nuclei (AGNs) downsizing effect; (3) At z ∼ 0, massive haloes/galaxies/SMBHs are responsible for most bright quasars due to low Eddington ratios among all SMBHs; (4) The bright ends of QLFs are dominated by SMBHs that are at least 0.3 dex overmassive relative to the median SMBH mass–galaxy mass relation; (5) QLFs at z ∼ 6–7 are dominated by SMBHs accreting at Eddington ratios 0.1 < ηrad < 1, but super-Eddington AGNs contribute more significantly to QLFs towards z ∼ 9–10.

Copyright and License

© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Acknowledgement

We thank the anonymous referee for their valuable and constructive comments, as well as Gurtina Besla, Haley Bowden, Arjun Dey, Sandy Faber, Dan Foreman-Mackey, Richard Green, Jenny Greene, Melanie Habouzit, Andrew Hearin, Raphael Hviding, Takuma Izumi, David Koo, Pavel Kroupa, Tod Lauer, Junyao Li, Jianwei Lyu, Alessandro Peca, Joel Primack, Yujing Qin, George Rieke, Marcia Rieke, Jan-Torge Schindler, John Silverman, Xuejian Shen, Yue Shen, Rachel Somerville, Fengwu Sun, Wei-Leong Tee, Yoshihiro Ueda, Feige Wang, and Minghao Yue for very valuable discussions.

Support for this research came partially via program number HST-AR-15631.001-A, provided through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute under NASA contract NAS5-26555. PB was partially funded by a Packard Fellowship, Grant #2019-69646. PB was also partially supported by a Giacconi Fellowship from the Space Telescope Science Institute. Finally, PB was also partially supported through program number HST-HF2-51353.001-A, provided by NASA through a Hubble Fellowship grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, under NASA contract NAS5-26555.

Data compilations from many studies used in this paper were made much more accurate and efficient by the online WebPlotDigitizer code.3 This research has made extensive use of the arXiv and NASA’s Astrophysics Data System.

This research used the Ocelote supercomputer of the University of Arizona. The allocation of computer time from the UA Research Computing High Performance Computing (HPC) at the University of Arizona is gratefully acknowledged. The Bolshoi–Planck simulation was performed by Anatoly Klypin within the Bolshoi project of the University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center (UC-HiPACC; PI Joel Primack).

Data Availability

The parallel implementation of Trinity, the compiled data sets (Section 3.2), the posterior distribution of model parameters, and the codes to compute the predictions for all the plots in this work are available at https://github.com/HaowenZhang/TRINITY.

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Additional details

Related works

Is new version of
Discussion Paper: arXiv:2305.19315 (arXiv)

Funding

Space Telescope Science Institute
HST-AR-15631.001-A
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NAS5-26555
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
2019-69646
Space Telescope Science Institute
HST-HF2-51353.001-A
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NAS5-26555

Dates

Submitted
2023-06-01
Accepted
2024-03-01
Available
2024-03-04
Published
Available
2024-03-21
Corrected and typeset

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Caltech groups
Astronomy Department , TAPIR , Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics , Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA) , Physics Department
Publication Status
Published