Cosmic Evolution of Black Holes and Spheroids. I. The MBH-σ Relation at z = 0.36

2006

158 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We test the evolution of the correlation between black hole mass and bulge velocity dispersion (MBH-σ), using a carefully selected sample of 14 Seyfert 1 galaxies at z = 0.36 ± 0.01. We measure velocity dispersion from stellar absorption lines around Mg b (5175 Å) and Fe (5270 Å) using high-S/N Keck spectra and estimate black hole mass from the Hβ line width and the optical luminosity at 5100 Å, based on the empirically calibrated photoionization method. We find a significant offset from the local relation, in the sense that velocity dispersions were smaller for given black hole masses at z = 0.36 than locally. We investigate various sources of systematic uncertainties and find that those cannot account for the observed offset. The measured offset is Δ log MBH = 0.62 ± 0.10 ± 0.25; i.e., Δ log σ = 0.15 ± 0.03 ± 0.06, where the error bars include a random component and an upper limit to the systematics. At face value, this result implies a substantial growth of bulges in the last 4 Gyr, assuming that the local MBH-σ relation is the universal evolutionary endpoint. Along with two samples of active galaxies with consistently determined black hole mass and stellar velocity dispersion taken from the literature, we quantify the observed evolution with the best-fit linear relation: Δ log MBH = (1.66 ± 0.43)z + (0.04 ± 0.09) with respect to the local relationship of Tremaine and coworkers, and Δ log MBH = (1.55 ± 0.46)z + (0.01 ± 0.12) with respect to that of Ferrarese. This result is consistent with the growth of black holes predating the final growth of bulges at these mass scales (⟨σ⟩ = 170 km s-1).

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/654236fc000e62b4a3a363981c9cd8460a744394

Citations in the corpus

• ON THE COSMIC EVOLUTION OF THE SCALING RELATIONS BETWEEN BLACK HOLES AND THEIR HOST GALAXIES: BROAD-LINE ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI IN THE zCOSMOS SURVEY (2009, background): “An alternative path has been followed by Woo et al. (2006), Treu et al. (2007) and Woo et al. (2008), who have studied carefully selected samples of moderately bright AGN in narrow redshift ranges (z ∼ 0.36 and 0.57), where the host’s stellar velocity dispersion can be measured directly from the…”
• Black Holes in Pseudobulges and Spheroidals: A Change in the Black Hole-Bulge Scaling Relations at Low Mass (2008, background): “At redshifts ranging from 0:37 < z < 6:4 numerous authors have found evidence for evolution in BH-host scaling relations, but the ratio of BH to bulge mass appears to increase at earlier times (e.g., Peng et al. 2006a, 2006b;Woo et al. 2006; Shields et al. 2006; Salviander et al. 2007; Ho 2007).”
• THE LICK AGN MONITORING PROJECT 2011: SPECTROSCOPIC CAMPAIGN AND EMISSION-LINE LIGHT CURVES (2015, methodology): “…the broad FeII blends) has a long history with many different implementations in the literature (e.g., Wills et al. 1985; Dietrich et al. 2002; Woo et al. 2006; Greene & Ho 2007; Shen et al. 2008; Kovačevíc et al. 2010), but only recently have such methods been applied to time-series…”
• Cosmic Evolution of Black Holes and Spheroids. III. The MBH-σ* Relation in the Last Six Billion Years (2008, methodology): “Starting with our pilot study (Treu et al. 2004), we reported the first direct measurement of the MBH-σ∗ relation beyond the local Universe (Woo et al. 2006, hereafter paper I), and updated it with corrected AGN continuum luminosities using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images in paper II (Treu et al”
• THE NON-CAUSAL ORIGIN OF THE BLACK-HOLE–GALAXY SCALING RELATIONS (2010, unknown): “…were made to measure local and higher redshift scaling relations of MBH–Mbulge, MBH–σbulge, or MBH–Lbulge (Treu et al. 2004; Peng et al. 2006a,b; Woo et al. 2006; Treu et al. 2007; Schramm et al. 2008; Jahnke et al. 2009; Merloni et al. 2010; Bennert et al. 2010; Decarli et al. 2010) and to…”
• The black hole mass–stellar velocity dispersion correlation: bulges versus pseudo-bulges (2008, background): “The validity of this relation have been explored for intermediate mass black holes (IMBHs) in dwarf galaxies (Barth et al. 2005), the local active galaxies (McLure & Dunlop 2002; Green & Ho 2006), and Seyfert galaxies at z = 0.36 (Woo et al. 2006; Treu et al. 2007).”
• A Systematic Analysis of Fe II Emission in Quasars: Evidence for Inflow to the Central Black Hole (2008, background): “…with respective to [O ii] (e.g., Boroson & Green 1992; Marziani et al. 1996; McLure & Jarvis 2002; Dietrich et al. 2003; Greene & Ho 2005b; Kim et al. 2006; Woo et al. 2006) and that it has the same line width as the broad component of H (e.g., Netzer & Trakhtenbrot 2007; Salviander et al. 2007).”
• Selection Bias in Observing the Cosmological Evolution of the M•-σ and M•-L Relationships (2007, methodology): “Treu et al. (2004) and Woo et al. (2006) measured the velocity dispersion of 14 Seyfert 1 galaxies at redshift z ’ 0:36; 2 Historically this method was based on photoionization calculations.”
• 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, 2008; Salviander et al. 2007; Merloni et al. 2010; Shen & Kelly 2010).”
• Cosmic Evolution of Black Holes and Spheroids. II. Scaling Relations at z = 0.36 (2007, background): “…of groups have started observational programs to trace the evolution of scaling laws over cosmic time (Shields et al. 2003; Treu et al. 2004; Walter et al. 2004; Adelberger & Steidel 2005; Woo et al. 2006, hereafter Paper I; McLure et al. 2006; Peng et al. 2006a, 2006b; Salviander et al. 2007).”
• Black Hole Growth to z = 2 - I: Improved Virial Methods for Measuring M_BH and L/L_Edd (2012, methodology): “• 19 SDSS sources atz ≃ 0.36 from the study of (McGill et al. 2008, Mc08 in the present paper) for which the MgII and Hβ lines were observed in a dedicated Keck/LRIS campaign (Woo et al. 2006).”
• ONGOING AND CO-EVOLVING STAR FORMATION IN zCOSMOS GALAXIES HOSTING ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2008, background): “…and their SMBHs may be intermittent with either stars or SMBHs growing somewhat faster or slower than each other, as indicated by our findings exemplified in Figure 13b, while still resulting in a tight black hole-bulge mass relation for inactive galaxies at z = 0 as suggested by Woo et al. (2006).”
• DISSIPATION AND EXTRA LIGHT IN GALACTIC NUCLEI. IV. EVOLUTION IN THE SCALING RELATIONS OF SPHEROIDS (2008, background): “Observations suggest that there may be evolution in the black hole host-galaxy scalings (e.g. Peng et al. 2006), but the details remain ambiguous (see e.g. Woo et al. 2006; Salviander et al. 2006; Lauer et al. 2007a).”
• An expanded Mbh–σ diagram, and a new calibration of active galactic nuclei masses (2010, background): “…hole masses from AGN spectra, the effects of changing f can be far-ranging, from individual objects to large AGN surveys (Barth, Greene & Ho 2005; Woo et al. 2006, 2008; Dong et al. 2007; Treu et al. 2007; Zhang, Dultzin-Hacyan & Wang 2007; Shen et al. 2008a,b; Vestergaard et al. 2008; Trump et…”
• Comparing and Calibrating Black Hole Mass Estimators for Distant Active Galactic Nuclei (2007, methodology): “The total continuum luminosities at 5100 Å measured from the SDSS spectra agree to within a few per cent of those inferred from the Keck spectra and those listed in the paper by Woo et al. (2006).”
• The stochastic gravitational-wave background from massive black hole binary systems: implications for observations with Pulsar Timing Arrays (2008, background): “Woo et al. (2006) provide the following best fit for the offset with respect to the local relation: ∆logMBH = 1.66z + 0.04 .”
• Discriminating Between the Physical Processes that Drive Spheroid Size Evolution (2009, methodology): “…we consider observations from z = 0–1 from Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) active galactic nuclei (AGN) samples (Salviander et al. 2006, 2007), from z = 1–3 from lensed quasar hosts (Peng et al. 2006), and at z = 0.36 from narrowredshift Seyfert samples (Woo et al. 2006; Treu et al. 2007).”
• Black Hole Masses and Enrichment of z ~ 6 SDSS Quasars (2007, background): “…least in nearby galaxies, is strongly correlated with the bulge velocity dispersion of the galaxy host (the so-calledMBH- bulge relation, where bulge is the velocity dispersion of the host galaxy’s bulge; e.g., Gebhardt et al. 2000; Ferrarese & Merritt 2000; Tremaine et al. 2002; Woo et al. 2006).”
• The Mass Function of Active Black Holes in the Local Universe (2007, background): “Assuming that theMBH − σ∗ relation is largely in place atz≈ 0.7 (Peng et al. 2006; Salviander et al. 2007; but see also Treu et al. 2004; Woo et al. 2006), the observed galaxy luminosities correspond to BHs with masses > 108 M⊙, casting doubt on the cosmic downsizing scenario for this population.”