The anti‐hierarchical growth of supermassive black holes

By A. Merloni. 2004

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I present a new method to unveil the history of cosmic accretion and the build-up of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the nuclei of galaxies, based on observations of the evolving radio and (hard) X-ray luminosity functions of active galactic nuclei (AGN). The fundamental plane of black hole activity discovered by Merloni, Heinz & Di Matteo, which defines a universal correlation among black hole mass (M), 2-10 keV X-ray luminosity and 5-GHz radio luminosity is used as a mass and accretion rate estimator, provided a specific functional form for the dependency of the X-ray luminosity on the dimensionless accretion rate m is assumed. I adopt the local black hole mass function (BHMF) as derived from the velocity dispersion (a) distributions of nearby galaxies coupled with the M - a relation as a boundary condition to integrate backwards in time the continuity equation for the evolution of SMBH, neglecting the role of mergers in shaping up the BHMF. Under the most general assumption that, independently on M, black hole accretion proceeds in a radiatively efficient way above a certain rate, and in a radiatively inefficient way below it, the redshift evolution of the BHMF and the black hole accretion rate (BHAR) function (i.e. the distribution of the Eddington scaled accretion rates for objects of any given mass) are calculated self-consistently. The only tunable parameters are the overall efficiency of extracting gravitational energy from the accreting gas, ∈, and the critical ratio of the X-ray to Eddington luminosity, L 2-10 keV,cr /L Edd ≡ x cr , at which the transition between accretion modes takes place. For fiducial values of these parameters (∈ = 0.1 and x cr = 10 -3 ), I found that half (∼85 per cent) of the local black hole mass density was accumulated at redshift z < 1 (z < 3), mostly in radiatively efficient episodes of accretion. The evolution of the BHMF between z = 0 and z ∼ 3 shows clear signs of an anti-hierarchical behaviour: while the majority of the most massive objects (M ≥ 10 9 ) were already in place at z ∼ 3, lower mass ones mainly grew at progressively lower redshift, so that the average black hole mass increases with increasing redshift. In addition, the average accretion rate decreases towards lower redshift. Consequently, sources in the radiatively inefficient regime of accretion only begin to dominate the comoving accretion energy density in the Universe at z < 1 (with the exact value of z depending on x cr ), while at the peak of the BHAR history, radiatively efficient accretion dominates by almost an order of magnitude. I will discuss the implications of these results for the efficiency of accretion on to SMBH, the lifetimes of quasars and duty cycles, the history of AGN feedback in the form of mechanical energy output and, more generally, for the cosmological models of structure formation in the Universe.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

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Citations in the corpus

What drives the growth of black holes (2011, background): “…constraints (e.g., BH mass density and distribution, evolving AGN luminosity functions, X-ray background spectrum; e.g., Marconi et al. 2004; Merloni 2004; Shankar et al. 2004, 2009; Hopkins et al. 2006a, 2008; Malbon et al. 2007; Di Matteo et al. 2008; Somerville et al. 2008; Fanidakis et…”
An Observational Determination of the Bolometric Quasar Luminosity Function (2006, background): “The mass functions at several redshifts are also shown: the highest mass black holes are formed at redshifts z 2, and low-mass black holes assemble at zP 1, in agreement with a number of previous studies (e.g., Merloni 2004; Marconi et al. 2004; Shankar et al. 2004; Hopkins et al. 2006c).”
GOODS-Herschel: the far-infrared view of star formation in active galactic nucleus host galaxies since z ≈ 3 (2011, background): “…(e.g., thesimilarity between the black hole accretion and star formation histories of the Universe, the tight correlation between black hole and galaxy bulge masses; Ferrarese & Merritt 2000; Gebhardt et al. 2000; Häring & Rix 2004; Boyle & Terlevich 1998; Franceschini et al. 1999; Merloni 2004).”
THE EVOLUTION OF SWIFT/BAT BLAZARS AND THE ORIGIN OF THE MeV BACKGROUND (2009, background): “A mechanism of accretion with different efficiencies, as a function of cosmic time, has been invoked to explain the anti-hierarchical growth of AGNs (e.g. Merloni 2004).”
Doing Science with eLISA: Astrophysics and Cosmology in the Millihertz Regime (2012, background): “5 < z < 3 (Merloni, 2004).”
Biases in Virial Black Hole Masses: An SDSS Perspective (2007, background): “…infrared, are starting to reveal those missingactive SMBHs (e.g., Treister et al. 2006; see also Zakamska et al. 2003), and will provide better constraints of the BH mass function at high redshift, given our knowledge of the local dormant BH mass function (e.g., Marconi et al. 2004; Merloni 2004).”
A synthesis model for AGN evolution: supermassive black holes growth and feedback modes (2008, background): “…the mass function, as the two distributions must be coupled via a continuity equation (Small & Blandford 1992; Yu & Tremaine 2002; Marconi et al. 2004; Merloni 2004, hereafter M04; Shankar, Weinberg & Miralda-Escudé 2008) ∂ΦM(M, t) ∂t + ∂[ΦM(M, t) · 〈Ṁ(M, t)〉] ∂M = 0, (2) to be solved given an…”
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey Quasar Survey: Quasar Luminosity Function from Data Release 3 (2006, background): “…the most interesting results to come out of recent AGN surveys is the evidence in favor of “cosmic downsizing,” wherein the peak of AGN activity occurs at higher redshifts for more luminous objects than less luminous objects (Cowie et al. 2003; Ueda et al. 2003; Merloni 2004; Barger et al. 2005).”
RELATIONS BETWEEN CENTRAL BLACK HOLE MASS AND TOTAL GALAXY STELLAR MASS IN THE LOCAL UNIVERSE (2015, background): “…estimates to a statistical ensemble of galaxies allows one eventually to derive a census of BHs, such as their mass functions and total mass density locked into BHs (e.g., Marconi et al. 2004; Shankar et al. 2004; Merloni 2004; Shankar et al. 2009; Gültekin et al. 2009; Kelly & Merloni 2012).”
Accretion-driven evolution of black holes: Eddington ratios, duty cycles and active galaxy fractions (2011, background): “…inactive populations) of the black holes of mass MBH at time t (see, e.g., Cavaliere et al. 1971; Small & Blandford 1992; Yu & Tremaine 2002; Steed & Weinberg 2003; Marconi et al. 2004; Merloni 2004; Yu & Lu 2004; Tamura et al. 2006; SWM; Shankar 2009; Raimundo & Fabian 2009; Kisaka & Kojima 2010).”
GALAXY ZOO: THE FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT CO-EVOLUTION OF SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES AND THEIR EARLY- AND LATE-TYPE HOST GALAXIES (2010, background): “…active galactic nuclei (AGN) in deep fields observed by Chandra and XMM-Newton have revealed that the most luminous AGN were most common in the early Universe, while the lower-luminosity AGN peak later (Ueda et al. 2003; Merloni 2004; Barger et al. 2005; La Franca et al. 2005; Croom et al. 2009).”
The XMM-Newton Wide-Field Survey in the COSMOS Field. III. Optical Identification and Multiwavelength Properties of a Large Sample of X-Ray-Selected Sources (2006, background): “…broadly consistent with the estimates of the mass accreted during the quasar phase (Fabian & Iwasawa 1999; Yu & Tremaine 2002; Elvis, Risaliti, & Zamorani 2002; Marconi et al. 2004; Merloni 2004) that made it clear that BH–driven nuclear activity and the assembly of bulge masses are closely linked.”
Formation of supermassive black holes by direct collapse in pre-galactic haloes (2006, unknown): “2 must be compared to the density that we observe at low z, i.e., ρBH(z = 0) ≈ 3−5×105M⊙ Mpc−3 (Yu & Tremaine 2002; Aller & Richstone 2002; Marconi et al. 2004; Fabian & Iwasawa 1999; Elvis, Risaliti & Zamorani 2002) and ρBH(z = 3) ≈ 4 − 5 × 104M⊙ Mpc−3 (Merloni 2004).”
Dusty Star Forming Galaxies at High Redshift (2014, background): “A major focus of galaxy evolution has been the coevolution of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) within their host galaxies and the interplay between active galactic nuclei (AGN) and starbursts (e.g. Connolly et al., 1997; Merloni, 2004; Hopkins et al., 2007).”
The Illustris simulation: the evolving population of black holes across cosmic time (2014, background): “…relation between star formation and black hole accretion rates in galaxies, these two processes are not necessarily intimately linked (see also e.g. Merloni 2004; Sijacki et al. 2007; Di Matteo et al. 2008; Somerville et al. 2008; Merloni & Heinz 2008), as we will discuss more in detail in Section…”
A Unified, Merger-driven Model of the Origin of Starbursts, Quasars, the Cosmic X-Ray Background, Supermassive Black Holes, and Galaxy Spheroids (2005, background): “…direct observations (McLure & Dunlop 2004) and comparison of the present-day black hole mass function with radio and X-ray luminosity functions (Merloni 2004) suggest an antihierarchical scenario for the growth of supermassive black holes, in which the most massive black holes are primarily in…”
PRIMUS: THE DEPENDENCE OF AGN ACCRETION ON HOST STELLAR MASS AND COLOR (2011, background): “It is also unclear if the Mbh−σ relation evolves with redshift or exists at all outside the local universe (e.g., Shields et al. 2003; Merloni 2004; Croton 2006; Peng et al. 2006a; Woo et al. 2006; Salviander et al. 2007; Woo et al. 2008; Merloni et al. 2010; Shen & Kelly 2010).”
Luminosity-dependent evolution of soft X-ray selected AGN : New Chandra and XMM-Newton surveys (2005, unknown): “…model of the black hole growth which can simultaneously explain the anti–hierarchical X-ray space density evolution and the local black hole mass function derived from the MBH−σ relation assuming two radically different modes of accretion has recently been presented by Merloni (2004).”
The cosmic evolution of massive black holes in the Horizon-AGN simulation (2016, methodology): “…& Hernquist 2007; Silverman et al. 2008; Ross et al. 2013, and references therein), and use it as a E-mail: martav@iap.fr signpost for the underlying BH population (e.g. Marconi et al. 2004; Merloni 2004; Shankar et al. 2004; Hopkins et al. 2006; Merloni & Heinz 2008; Draper & Ballantyne 2012).”