TRINITY II: The luminosity-dependent bias of the supermassive black hole mass–galaxy mass relation for bright quasars at z = 6
Creators
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1.
University of Arizona
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2.
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan
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3.
Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris
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4.
Johns Hopkins University
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5.
University of Oxford
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6.
Royal Observatory
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7.
University of Leicester
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8.
California Institute of Technology
Abstract
Using recent empirical constraints on the dark matter halo–galaxy–supermassive black hole (SMBH) connection from z = 0–7, we infer how undermassive, typical, and overmassive SMBHs contribute to the quasar luminosity function (QLF) at z = 6. We find that beyond Lbol = 5 × 1046 erg s−1, the z = 6 QLF is dominated by SMBHs that are at least 0.3 dex above the z = 6 median M•–M* relation. The QLF is dominated by typical SMBHs (i.e. within ±0.3 dex around the M•–M* relation) at Lbol ≲ 1045 erg s−1. At z ∼ 6, the intrinsic M•–M* relation for all SMBHs is slightly steeper than the z = 0 scaling, with a similar normalization at M* ~ 1011⊙. We also predict the M•–M* relation for z = 6 bright quasars selected by different bolometric luminosity thresholds, finding very good agreement with observations. For quasars with Lbol > 3 × 1046 (1048) erg s−1, the scaling relation is shifted upwards by ∼0.35 (1.0) dex for 1011M⊙ galaxies. To accurately measure the intrinsic M•–M* relation, it is essential to include fainter quasars with Lbol ≲ 1045 erg s−1. At high redshifts, low-luminosity quasars are thus the best targets for understanding typical formation paths for SMBHs in galaxies.
Copyright and License
Acknowledgement
We thank the anonymous referee for the valuable and constructive feedback. We also thank Gurtina Besla, Haley Bowden, Jane Bright, Katie Chamberlain, Jaclyn Champagne, Arjun Dey, Richard Green, Jenny Greene, Kate Grier, Raphael Hviding, Takuma Izumi, Tod Lauer, Junyao Li, Jianwei Lyu, Joan Najita, George Rieke, Marcia Rieke, John Silverman, Fengwu Sun, Wei-Leong Tee, Feige Wang, Ben Weiner, Christina Williams, and Charity Woodrum for very valuable discussions. 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 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), and the posterior distribution of model parameters are available online.
Additional details
Related works
- Is new version of
- Discussion Paper: arXiv:2303.08150 (arXiv)
Funding
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- University of California System
Dates
- Accepted
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2023-05-17
- Available
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2023-05-25Published
- Available
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2023-06-05Corrected and typeset
Caltech Custom Metadata
- Caltech groups
- TAPIR , Walter Burke Institute for Theoretical Physics , Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA)
- Publication Status
- Published