The Radio Luminosity-Black Hole Mass Correlation for Quasars from the FIRST Bright Quasar Survey and a “Unification Scheme” for Radio-loud and Radio-quiet Quasars

By M. Lacy, S. Laurent-Muehleisen, S. Ridgway, Robert H. Becker, R. White. 2001

146 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Several independent lines of evidence now point to a correlation between black hole mass Mbh and radio luminosity. In this Letter, we discuss the correlation for quasars from the FIRST Bright Quasar Survey (FBQS) using black hole mass estimates from Hβ line widths. The FBQS objects fill in the gap between the radio-loud and radio-quiet quasars in the radio luminosity-optical luminosity plane, and we find that they fill the corresponding gap in the Mbh-radio luminosity correlation. There is thus a continuous variation of radio luminosity with Mbh, and no evidence for a "switch" at some set of critical parameter values that turns on powerful radio jets. By combining the FBQS data with that for quasars from the Palomar-Green survey, we find evidence for a dependence of radio luminosity on accretion rate relative to the Eddington limit, L/LEdd, as well as on Mbh, consistent with the well-known radio-optical correlation for radio-loud quasars. We therefore suggest a new scheme to "unify" radio-loud and radio-quiet objects in which the radio luminosity scales proportional to M(L/LEdd)1.0 for L/LEdd ~ 0.1, with an apparently weaker accretion rate dependence at low L/LEdd. The scatter about this relation is ±1.1 dex and may well hide significant contributions from other physical effects, such as the black hole spin and radio source environment.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Citations in the corpus

Accretion states and radio loudness in active galactic nuclei: analogies with X-ray binaries (2006, background): “The division between radio-loud and radio-quiet objects proposed by Boroson (2002) is one in black hole mass, similar to those reported elsewhere (Franceschini, Vercellone & Fabian 1998; Lacy et al. 2001; Jarvis & McLure 2002).”
Radio-loud Narrow-Line Type 1 Quasars (2006, background): “…in the Laor diagram, and while some discussion has emerged whether there is any clear dependence of black hole mass on radio loudness at all (e.g., Lacy et al. 2001, Oshlack et al. 2002, Woo and Urry 2002, McLure & Jarvis 2004, Best et al. 2005), our radio-loud NLS1 galaxies are still located in…”
Black Hole Mass and Eddington Ratio as Drivers for the Observable Properties of Radio-loud and Radio-quiet QSOs (2001, background): “Lacy et al. (2001) find that radio luminosity scales proportional to M1.”
A Fundamental plane of black hole activity (2003, background): “…there have been various claims for the existence of a correlation between radio luminosity or radio loudness (a measure of the ratio of radio to bolometric luminosity) and SMBH masses (Franceschini, Vercellone, & Fabian 1998; McLure & Dunlop 2001; Lacy et al. 2001; Nagar et al. 2002; Laor 2000).”
On the Relationship between Radio Emission and Black Hole Mass in Galactic Nuclei (2001, background): “Lacy et al. (2001) suggest that, in addition to the primary dependence on the radio luminosity is also a weakMBH,function of Along similar lines, Franceschini et al.L /L E.(1998) proposed that the weakly active nuclei in nearby galaxies also obey a correlation between radio luminosity and roughly…”
The Radio-Loud Fraction of Quasars is a Strong Function of Redshift and Optical Luminosity (2006, background): “Radio-loud quasars are likely to reside in more massive galaxies (e.g., Peacock et al. 1986; Best et al. 2005) and to harbor moremassive central black holes (e.g., Laor 2000; Lacy et al. 2001; McLure & Jarvis 2004) than are radio-quiet quasars.”
The non-linear dependence of flux on black hole mass and accretion rate in core-dominated jets (2003, background): “Nevertheless, some observational evidence of a non-linear dependence between AGN radio flux and black hole mass (Franceschini, Vercellone & Fabian 1998; Laor 2000; Lacy et al. 2001; McLure & Dunlop 2001) exists in the recent literature.”
SWIRE: The SIRTF Wide‐Area Infrared Extragalactic Survey (2001, background): “…in the near- and midIR where we expect the unique AGN identification signatures, specifically warm dust associated with the torus in the 3< λ < 40µm range, and very red colors due to extinction in the near-IR, such as being found for moderately obscured 2MASS AGN (Lacy et al. 2001; Cutri 2001).”
The FIRST-2MASS Red Quasar Survey (2007, methodology): “We compare these measurements with contemporaneous 20 and 3.6 cmVLAmeasurements for 214 FBQSquasars (Lacy et al. 2001).”
On the black hole–bulge mass relation in active and inactive galaxies (2001, methodology): “1 I N T R O D U C T I O N The technique of using the broad Hb emission line to estimate the central black hole masses of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) has recently been employed widely in the literature (e.g. Lacy et al. 2001; Laor 2001; Wandel 1999).”
UNIFICATION OF LUMINOUS TYPE 1 QUASARS THROUGH C iv EMISSION (2010, background): “Some authors have argued that RL quasars appear to be more massive, on average, than RQ quasars (Laor 2000a; Lacy et al. 2001; McLure & Jarvis 2004) and Boroson (2002) has argued that high mass is what separates the RL and RQ quasars in EV1–EV2 parameter space.”
Active Galactic Nucleus Black Hole Masses and Bolometric Luminosities (2002, result): “10, top panel) since previous reports have suggested that there is a correlation between the two (McLure et al. 1999; Lacy et al. 2001), although more recent investigations have not found such a correlation (Ho 2002; Oshlack et al 2002).”
Supermassive Black Holes in Galactic Nuclei: Past, Present and Future Research (2004, background): “These studies find either a looser correlation (Laor 2000; Lacy et al. 2001; Wu & Han 2001) or no correlation at all (Ho 2002; Oshlack et al. 2002; Woo & Urry 2002).”
AGN heating and ICM cooling in the HIFLUGCS sample of galaxy clusters (2008, background): “Lacy et al. (2001) also find a similar correlation for a sample of steep-spectrum radio sources, albeit leading to a flatter slope of 1.4.”
The blazar sequence: a new perspective (2008, background): “Lacy et al. (2001) proposed that the radio loudness is a function of mass, with most radio-loud sources having M> a few ×108 M , while D’Elia, Padovani & Land (2003), with a sample of strong lined blazars, found a range of masses extending significantly to the lower end, down to a few ×107 M (see…”
Quasars, their host galaxies and their central black holes (2001, background): “In fact the findings of Lacy et al. (2001) strongly favour the latter option.”
The cosmological evolution of quasar black hole masses (2003, background): “…samples, investigating the relationships between black-hole mass, the properties of the surrounding host galaxies and the spectral energy distribution of the central engine (e.g. Laor 1998, 2000, 2001; Wandel 1999; McLure & Dunlop 2001,2002; Lacy et al 2001; Dunlop et al 2003; Vestergaard 2004).”