The Mass Function of Active Black Holes in the Local Universe

By Jenny E. Greene, Luis C. Ho. 2007

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We present the first measurement of the BH mass function for broad-line active galaxies in the local universe. Using the ~8500 broad-line active galaxies from SDSS DR4, we construct a broad-line luminosity function that agrees very well with the local soft X-ray luminosity function. Using standard virial relations, we then convert observed broad-line luminosities and widths into BH masses. A mass function constructed in this way has the unique capability to probe the mass region <106 M☉, which, while insignificant in terms of total BH mass density, nevertheless may place important constraints on the mass distribution of seed BHs in the early universe. The characteristic local active BH has a mass of ~107 M☉ radiating at 10% of the Eddington rate. The active fraction is a strong function of BH mass; at both higher and lower masses the active mass function falls more steeply than one would infer from the distribution of bulge luminosity. The deficit of local massive radiating BHs is a well-known phenomenon, while we present the first robust measurement of a decline in the space density of active BHs at low mass.

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Citations in the corpus

PRECISE BLACK HOLE MASSES FROM MEGAMASER DISKS: BLACK HOLE–BULGE RELATIONS AT LOW MASS (2010, background): “Our knowledge of BH demographics at low masses is rudimentary, such that the shape and scatter in BH-bulge scaling relations as well as the BH occupation fraction in spiral galaxies remain uncertain (e.g., Greene & Ho 2007).”
Rapid and Bright Stellar-mass Binary Black Hole Mergers in Active Galactic Nuclei (2016, unknown): “We use the lognormal fit to the observed AGN mass function in the local universe (Greene & Ho 2007, 2009) dnAGN dM• = 3.4×10−5Mpc−3 M• ×10−[log(M•/M )−6.7] 2/0.”
Cosmic Evolution of Black Holes and Spheroids. II. Scaling Relations at z = 0.36 (2007, methodology): “Estimating the black hole mass function is beyond the scope of this work (e.g., Bernardi et al. 2007; Greene & Ho 2007).”
RELATIONS BETWEEN CENTRAL BLACK HOLE MASS AND TOTAL GALAXY STELLAR MASS IN THE LOCAL UNIVERSE (2015, methodology): “This subsample includes the wellstudied dwarf disk galaxy NGC 4395 hosting a Seyfert 1 nucleus (Filippenko & Sargent 1989; Filippenko & Ho 2003), two objects from the Greene & Ho (2007a) sample of low-mass BHs, and the dwarf disk galaxy presented in Dong et al. (2007).”
FEEDBACK FROM CENTRAL BLACK HOLES IN ELLIPTICAL GALAXIES: TWO-DIMENSIONAL MODELS COMPARED TO ONE-DIMENSIONAL MODELS (2010, background): “Lowredshift observational constraints for the fraction of 3 × 108M⊙ BHs accreting at 1% and 10% of the Eddington rate are taken from Heckman et al. (2004), Greene & Ho (2007), Ho (2009), and Kauffmann & Heckman (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 Coevolution of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes: Insights from Surveys of the Contemporary Universe (2014, methodology): “A complementary probe of lower-mass SMBH in SDSS is provided by using mass estimates based on the broad emission-line width for Type 1 AGN (Greene & Ho 2007b, Dong et al. 2012, Kormendy & Ho 2013).”
DWARF GALAXIES WITH OPTICAL SIGNATURES OF ACTIVE MASSIVE BLACK HOLES (2013, methodology): “106.5 M ), the line-widths can be just hundreds of km s−1 (e.g., Filippenko & Ho 2003; Greene & Ho 2007a).”
BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey. I. Spectral Measurements, Derived Quantities, and AGN Demographics (2017, result): “The value of this limit is consistent with many past quasar studies (e.g. EW<45 Å; Shen et al. 2011) though some studies of nearby AGN have used much weaker broad lines (e.g. EW<15 Å; Greene & Ho 2007).”
A New Sample of Low-Mass Black Holes in Active Galaxies (2007, methodology): “We would expect anαox≈ −1.2 corresponding to the medianl2500= 6×1027 ergs s−1 Hz−1 (as was seen for the GH objects observed withChandra; Greene & Ho 2007a).”
Black Holes in Pseudobulges and Spheroidals: A Change in the Black Hole-Bulge Scaling Relations at Low Mass (2008, methodology): “It is worth noting, however, that there are implicit constraints on the host galaxy light set by the selection process, which are discussed in detail by Greene & Ho (2007b).”
Titans of the early Universe: The Prato statement on the origin of the first supermassive black holes (2018, methodology): “…been found using either emission line diagnostics or the width of broad emission lines from the gas, assumed to be virialised, around them (e.g., Greene & Ho 2004, 2007; Dong, Greene, & Ho 2012b; Moran et al. 2014; Reines, Greene, & Geha 2013; Sartori et al. 2015; Chilingarian et al. 2018;…”
THE LICK AGN MONITORING PROJECT: BROAD-LINE REGION RADII AND BLACK HOLE MASSES FROM REVERBERATION MAPPING OF Hβ (2009, background): “It is particularly important to have thcorrect calibration for AGNs in the mass range of 106–107 M⊙, as they are at the peak of the local black hole mass distribution function (e.g., Greene & Ho 2007).”
Accretion-driven evolution of black holes: Eddington ratios, duty cycles and active galaxy fractions (2011, methodology): “The abundance ratio of the two types of AGN has been addressed by Greene & Ho (2009; a correction of Greene & Ho 2007), who analyze all SDSS spectroscopic objects (targeted as galaxies or quasars) in Data Release 4 (AdelmanMcCarthy et al. 2006) to define a sample of 8,400 broad-line AGN at z .”
Nuclear Activity in Nearby Galaxies (2008, methodology): “Moreover, the degree of radio-loudness scales inversely with Lbol/LEdd (Ho 2002a; Terashima & Wilson 2003b; Wang, Luo & Ho 2004; Greene, Ho & Ulvestad 2006; Panessa et al. 2007; Sikora, Stawarz & Lasota 2007; L.C. Ho, in preparation; see Figure 10b).”
What drives the growth of black holes (2011, methodology): “…z < 2 quasars (BH masses estimated using the virial estimator; see §4.1) provide further support for this view by showing a decrease in both the characteristic active BH mass and Eddington ratio with decreasing redshift (e.g., McLure & Dunlop, 2004; Greene & Ho, 2007; Netzer & Trakhtenbrot, 2007).”
Rates of stellar tidal disruption as probes of the supermassive black hole mass function (2014, background): “However, the SMBH occupation fraction is much less certain, especially in low mass galaxies (e.g. Greene & Ho 2007).”
SPACE DENSITY OF OPTICALLY SELECTED TYPE 2 QUASARS (2008, background): “A more recent measurement of the type 1 AGN Hα LF by Greene & Ho (2007) is ∼40 times lower at low luminosities than that derived by Hao et al. (2005b) because of their more stringent sample selection criteria, but the two LFs are consistent with each other at the high-luminosity end (L[O iii] ∼ 108…”