MASS FUNCTIONS OF THE ACTIVE BLACK HOLES IN DISTANT QUASARS FROM THE LARGE BRIGHT QUASAR SURVEY, THE BRIGHT QUASAR SURVEY, AND THE COLOR-SELECTED SAMPLE OF THE SDSS FALL EQUATORIAL STRIPE

By M. Vestergaard, Patrick S. Osmer Tufts University, T. O. S. University. 2009

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We present mass functions of distant actively accreting supermassive black holes residing in luminous quasars discovered in the Large Bright Quasar Survey (LBQS), the Bright Quasar Survey (BQS), and the Fall Equatorial Stripe of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The quasars cover a wide range of redshifts from the local universe to z = 5 and were subject to different selection criteria and flux density limits. This makes these samples complementary and can help us gain additional insight on the true underlying black hole mass distribution free from selection effects and mass estimation errors through future studies. By comparing these quasar samples, we see evidence that the active black hole population at redshift four is somewhat different than that at lower redshifts, including that in the nearby universe. In particular, there is a sharp increase in the space density of the detected active black holes (MBH ≳108M☉) between redshifts ∼4 and ∼2.5. Also, the mass function of the SDSS quasars at 3.6 ⩽ z ⩽ 5 has a somewhat flatter high-mass-end slope of β = −1.75 ± 0.56, compared to the mass functions based on quasars below z of 3 (BQS and LBQS quasars), which display typical slopes of β ≈ −3.3; the latter are consistent with the mass functions at similar redshifts based on the SDSS Data Release 3 quasar catalog presented by Vestergaard et al. We see clear evidence of cosmic downsizing in the comoving space density distribution of active black holes in the LBQS sample alone. In forthcoming papers, further analysis, comparison, and discussion of these mass functions will be made with other existing black hole mass functions, notably that based on the SDSS DR3 quasar catalog. We present the relationships used to estimate the black hole mass based on the Mg ii emission line; the relations are calibrated to the Hβ and C iv relations by means of several thousand high-quality SDSS spectra. Mass estimates of the individual black holes of these samples are also presented.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5faa5bd21545a5e078460716629b722d18e3fd12

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Citations in the corpus

COMPARING SINGLE-EPOCH VIRIAL BLACK HOLE MASS ESTIMATORS FOR LUMINOUS QUASARS (2012, methodology): “This MgII calibration is close to the one presented in Vestergaard & Osmer (2009), and works reasonably well for the entire luminosity regime 1045 L5100 1047ergs−1.”
EDDINGTON-LIMITED ACCRETION AND THE BLACK HOLE MASS FUNCTION AT REDSHIFT 6 (2010, methodology): “We use the relationship determined by Vestergaard & Osmer (2009) to calculate black hole masses from the Mg ii line width, FWHM(Mg ii) and the luminosity at rest-frame 3000 Å, L3000 logMBH = 6.86 + 2 log FWHM(Mg II) 1000 km s−1 + 0.5 log L30001037 W .”
Pōniuā‘ena: A Luminous z = 7.5 Quasar Hosting a 1.5 Billion Solar Mass Black Hole (2020, methodology): “We estimate the black mass based on the bolometric luminosity and the FWHM of the Mg II line by adopting the local empirical relation from Vestergaard & Osmer (2009).”
CONSTRAINTS ON BLACK HOLE GROWTH, QUASAR LIFETIMES, AND EDDINGTON RATIO DISTRIBUTIONS FROM THE SDSS BROAD-LINE QUASAR BLACK HOLE MASS FUNCTION (2010, methodology): “There have been several estimates of the BHMF of BLQSOs calculated directly from the mass estimates derived from the broad emission lines (Wang et al. 2006; Greene & Ho 2007; Vestergaard et al. 2008; Vestergaard & Osmer 2009; Kelly et al. 2009b, hereafter KVF09).”
THE MEGAMASER COSMOLOGY PROJECT. III. ACCURATE MASSES OF SEVEN SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES IN ACTIVE GALAXIES WITH CIRCUMNUCLEAR MEGAMASER DISKS (2010, methodology): “Another commonly used BH mass measuring technique is the virial estimation method (Greene & Ho 2006; Kim et al. 2008; Vestergaard & Osmer 2009).”
BLACK HOLE MASS ESTIMATES AND EMISSION-LINE PROPERTIES OF A SAMPLE OF REDSHIFT z > 6.5 QUASARS (2013, methodology): “For example, one can use the Doppler emission-line widths to estimate the mass of the BH (MBH) via empirical mass-scaling relations (e.g., Vestergaard & Peterson 2006; Vestergaard & Osmer 2009).”
RELATIONS BETWEEN CENTRAL BLACK HOLE MASS AND TOTAL GALAXY STELLAR MASS IN THE LOCAL UNIVERSE (2015, background): “Black Hole Masses and Luminosities Single-epoch spectroscopic BH masses are routinely estimated for broad-line AGNs (e.g., Greene & Ho 2007b; Vestergaard & Osmer 2009; Schulze & Wisotzki 2010).”
Black Hole Growth to z = 2 - I: Improved Virial Methods for Measuring M_BH and L/L_Edd (2012, methodology): “Such methods would potentially enable the study of large samples of AGN at 1.5 <∼ z <∼ 5 for which CIV is observed in large optical surveys (e.g., Vestergaard et al. 2008; Vestergaard & Osmer 2009).”
THE LOW-LUMINOSITY END OF THE RADIUS–LUMINOSITY RELATIONSHIP FOR ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2013, background): “…et al. 2011), black hole mass functions and Eddington ratio distributions through cosmic history (e.g., Greene & Ho 2007b; Vestergaard et al. 2008; Vestergaard & Osmer 2009; Kelly et al. 2009; Schulze & Wisotzki 2010), cos mic evolution of black holes and their host galaxies (e.g., Woo et al.…”
A CATALOG OF QUASAR PROPERTIES FROM SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY DATA RELEASE 7 (2010, methodology): “Vestergaard 2002; McLure & Jarvis 2002; McLure & Dunlop 2004; Greene & Ho 2005b; Vestergaard & Peterson 2006; McGill et al. 2008; Vestergaard & Osmer 2009; Wang et al. 2009b).”
An expanded Mbh–σ diagram, and a new calibration of active galactic nuclei masses (2010, background): “…no significant ramifications: e.g. the evolution in the relationship between black holes and spheroids in AGN samples (e.g. Peng et al. 2006a,b; Bennert et al. 2010; Decarli et al. 2010a,b); or the slope of the active BH mass function (e.g. Kelly, Vestergaard & Fan 2009; Vestergaard & Osmer 2009).”
Measuring the Masses of Supermassive Black Holes (2014, background): “The demographics of black holes (e.g., Shankar 2009; Vestergaard & Osmer 2009; Shen & Kelly 2012, and references therein) are thus of keen interest for understanding the accretion history of the universe.”
SPECTROSCOPY OF BROAD-LINE BLAZARS FROM 1LAC (2012, background): “Values of a and b are tabulated in Table 2 from Vestergaard & Peterson (2006) (hereafter VP06) for H β and C IV and Vestergaard & Osmer (2009) (hereafter, VO09) for Mg II.”
Physical Properties of 15 Quasars at z ≳ 6.5 (2017, methodology): “We derive the mass of the black hole following Vestergaard & Osmer (2009): MBH M = 106.86 ( FWHM 103 km s−1 )2( λLλ,3000 1044 erg s−1 )0.5 (11) This relation has been obtained using thousands of high quality quasar spectra from SDSS-DR3 (Schneider et al. 2005), and has been calibrated on robust…”