A Unified, Merger-driven Model of the Origin of Starbursts, Quasars, the Cosmic X-Ray Background, Supermassive Black Holes, and Galaxy Spheroids

By P. Hopkins, L. Hernquist, Thomas J. Cox, T. Di Matteo, Brant Robertson, Volker Springel. 2005

1,519 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present an evolutionary model for starbursts, quasars, and spheroidal galaxies in which mergers between gas-rich galaxies drive nuclear inflows of gas, producing starbursts and feeding the buried growth of supermassive black holes (BHs) until feedback expels gas and renders a briefly visible optical quasar. The quasar lifetime and obscuring column density depend on both the instantaneous and peak quasar luminosity, and we determine this dependence using a large set of galaxy merger simulations varying galaxy properties, orbital geometry, and gas physics. We use these fits to deconvolve observed quasar luminosity functions and obtain the evolution of the formation rate of quasars with peak luminosity, (Lpeak, z). Quasars spend extended periods at luminosities well below peak, so (Lpeak) has a maximum corresponding to the "break" in the observed luminosity function. From (Lpeak) and our simulations, we obtain self-consistent hard and soft X-ray and optical luminosity functions and predict many observables at multiple redshifts, including column density distributions of optical and X-ray samples, the luminosity function of broad-line quasars in X-ray samples and broad-line fraction versus luminosity, active BH mass functions, the distribution of Eddington ratios, the mass function of relic BHs and total BH mass density, and the cosmic X-ray background. In every case, our predictions agree well with observed estimates, without invoking ad hoc assumptions about source properties or distributions. We provide a library of Monte Carlo realizations of our models for comparison with observations.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/67150be2d58b1cf1e073f89c0608c1dd0b84c54c

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Citations in the corpus

Hot Accretion Flows Around Black Holes (2014, background): “…in galaxy clusters (Churazov 2002, Ruszkowski & Begelman 2002), it is included in semi-empirical models of galaxy formation (Croton et al. 2006, Hopkins et al. 2006, Somerville et al. 2008), and incorporated in hydrodynamical simulations of galaxy formation and evolution (Ciotti et al. 2010,…”
Cosmological simulations of the growth of supermassive black holes and feedback from active galactic nuclei: method and tests (2009, positive): “Numerical hydrodynamic simulations of galaxy mergers containing AGN (e.g. Springel et al. 2005, hereafter S05; Di Matteo, Springel & Hernquist 2005; Hopkins et al. 2006; Robertson et al. 2006) have shown that the presence of a central AGN can significantly alter the structure of merger remnants,…”
The FIRST-2MASS Red Quasar Survey (2007, background): “673 recent numerical simulations of joint black hole/galaxy formation have been able to account for many of these observations (Di Matteo et al. 2005; Hopkins et al. 2006).”
Defining the intrinsic AGN infrared spectral energy distribution and measuring its contribution to the infrared output of composite galaxies (2011, background): “…of AGN and star-formation activity that are crucial to our understanding of the interactions between these two processes that are believed to exist (e.g., Magorri n et al. 1998; Ferrarese & Merritt 2000; Gebhardt et al. 2000; Crotonet al. 2006; Bower et al. 2006; Hopkins et al. 2006, 2007).”
On the correlations between galaxy properties and supermassive black hole mass (2011, methodology): “The local characterization and cosmic evolution of the M• scaling relations have already been examined through theoretical models for the coevolution of galaxies and SMBHs (Granato et al. 2004; Vittorini, Shankar & Cavaliere 2005; Hopkins et al. 2006; Monaco, Fontanot & Taffoni 2007).”
Jet-induced star formation in gas-rich galaxies (2011, neutral): “…simulations often include AGN feedback in massive galaxies in order to avoid both further growth of massive galaxies via star formation and the presence of a young stellar population at low redshift (e.g. Croton et al. 2006; Bower et al. 2006; Hopkins et al. 2006; Schawinski et al. 2006).”
Project Overview of the Beijing–Arizona Sky Survey (2017, background): “Quasars may represent a key transitional phase in the evolution of massive galaxies (Hopkins et al. 2006).”
BULGE GROWTH AND QUENCHING SINCE z = 2.5 IN CANDELS/3D-HST (2014, background): “For the high-mass regime of galaxies, pow- 2 erful AGN feedback, which may be induced by galaxy mergers (e.g., Hopkins et al. 2006) or internal evolutionary processes triggered by (violent) gravitational disk instabilities (e.g., Bournaud et al. 2011), may drive energetic outflows expelling gas out…”
Selection Bias in Observing the Cosmological Evolution of the M•-σ and M•-L Relationships (2007, background): “Recent theoretical work (e.g., Hopkins et al. 2006) supports this view, and also predicts how the relations between the properties of black holes and their host galaxies have changed over time.”
The Illustris simulation: the evolving population of black holes across cosmic time (2014, background): “Based on these simulation results Hopkins et al. (2006) proposed a unified model for the merger-driven origin of quasars and their host spheroids.”
The Masses of Nuclear Black Holes in Luminous Elliptical Galaxies and Implications for the Space Density of the Most Massive Black Holes (2006, methodology): “Hopkins et al. (2006) find a good fit to the X-ray and optical quasar LFs with L zð Þ ¼ L 0ð Þ exp k ð Þ; ð42Þ where is the dimensionless look-back time ¼ H0 R dt and the other parameters are presumed constant.”
THE ERA OF STAR FORMATION IN GALAXY CLUSTERS (2013, background): “If these observed starbursts are merger-induced, recent simulations (e.g., Springel et al. 2005; Hopkins et al. 2006; Narayanan et al. 2010) predict that AGN feedback may also play a significant role in quenching the star formation in these cluster galaxies.”
A LARGE SYSTEMATIC SEARCH FOR CLOSE SUPERMASSIVE BINARY AND RAPIDLY RECOILING BLACK HOLES (2011, positive): “Such models (e.g., Volonteri et al. 2003; Di Matteo et al. 2005; Hopkins et al. 2006) attribute the observed correlation to co-evolution of the black hole and the host via hierarchical galaxy mergers and accretion.”
Theoretical Challenges in Galaxy Formation (2016, background): “…al. 2014; Choi et al. 2014; Debuhr, Quataert & Ma 2011; Debuhr et al. 2010; Johansson, Naab & Burkert 2009; Robertson et al. 2006c) and the evolution of the quasar luminosity function based on the assumption that most of the AGN activity is driven by galaxy mergers (e.g. Hopkins et al. 2005, 2006).”
Direct Cosmological Simulations of the Growth of Black Holes and Galaxies (2007, methodology): “The detailed effects of such an energy input from black hole accretion into a medium with an initial density gradient are also studied in Hopkins et al. (2006b) andHopkins&Hernquist (2006).”
Doing Science with eLISA: Astrophysics and Cosmology in the Millihertz Regime (2012, background): “The relation may have been established along the course of galactic mergers and in episodes of self-regulated accretion (Croton et al., 2006, Di Matteo et al., 2005, Hopkins et al., 2006, 2008, 2009, Johansson et al., 2009, Lamastra et al., 2010, Mihos and Hernquist, 1996, Somerville et al., 2008).”
The Redshift Evolution of Wet, Dry, and Mixed Galaxy Mergers from Close Galaxy Pairs in the DEEP2 Galaxy Redshift Survey (2008, background): “…star formation (Barton et al. 2000; Lambas et al. 2003; Nikolic, Cullen, & Alexander 2004; Woods, Geller, & Barton 2006; Lin et al. 2007; Bridge et al. 2007; Barton et al. 2007), cause quasar activity (Hopkins et al. 2006) and transform disk galaxies into ellipticals (Toomre & Toomre 1972).”