ON THE COSMIC EVOLUTION OF THE SCALING RELATIONS BETWEEN BLACK HOLES AND THEIR HOST GALAXIES: BROAD-LINE ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI IN THE zCOSMOS SURVEY

By A. Merloni, A. Bongiorno, M. Bolzonella, M. Brusa, F. Civano, A. Comastri, M. Elvis, F. Fiore, R. Gilli, H. Hao and 49 more. 2009

239 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We report on the measurement of the physical properties (rest-frame K-band luminosity and total stellar mass) of the hosts of 89 broad-line (type-1) active galactic nuclei (AGNs) detected in the zCOSMOS survey in the redshift range 1 < z < 2.2. The unprecedented multi-wavelength coverage of the survey field allows us to disentangle the emission of the host galaxy from that of the nuclear black hole in their spectral energy distributions (SEDs). We derive an estimate of black hole masses through the analysis of the broad Mg ii emission lines observed in the medium-resolution spectra taken with VIMOS/VLT as part of the zCOSMOS project. We found that, as compared to the local value, the average black hole to host-galaxy mass ratio appears to evolve positively with redshift, with a best-fit evolution of the form , where the large asymmetric systematic errors stem from the uncertainties in the choice of initial mass function, in the calibration of the virial relation used to estimate BH masses and in the mean QSO SED adopted. On the other hand, if we consider the observed rest-frame K-band luminosity, objects tend to be brighter, for a given black hole mass, than those on the local MBH–MK relation. This fact, together with more indirect evidence from the SED fitting itself, suggests that the AGN hosts are likely actively star-forming galaxies. A thorough analysis of observational biases induced by intrinsic scatter in the scaling relations reinforces the conclusion that an evolution of the MBH–M* relation must ensue for actively growing black holes at early times: either its overall normalization, or its intrinsic scatter (or both) appear to increase with redshift. This can be interpreted as signature of either a more rapid growth of supermassive black holes at high redshift, a change of structural properties of AGN hosts at earlier times, or a significant mismatch between the typical growth times of nuclear black holes and host galaxies. In any case, our results provide important clues on the nature of the early co-evolution of black holes and galaxies and challenging tests for models of AGN feedback and self-regulated growth of structures.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Citations in the corpus

Cosmic X-ray surveys of distant active galaxies (2015, background): “Reliable host-galaxy measurements for the population of luminous and unobscured AGNs are also possible provided the AGN emission can be accurately constrained (and therefore removed) at UV–NIR wavelengths (e.g., Assef et al 2010; Merloni et al 2010; Bongiorno et al 2012; Santini et al 2012).”
The LABOCA survey of the Extended Chandra Deep Field-South: clustering of submillimetre galaxies (2011, background): “…to the local black hole–galaxy mass relations (e.g. Alexander et al. 2008; Carrera et al. 2011), while the black holes in z ∼ 2 QSOs tend to lie above the local relation, with masses similar to those in local massive ellipticals (e.g. Bennert et al. 2010; Decarli et al. 2010; Merloni et al. 2010).”
THE XMM-NEWTON WIDE-FIELD SURVEY IN THE COSMOS FIELD (XMM-COSMOS): DEMOGRAPHY AND MULTIWAVELENGTH PROPERTIES OF OBSCURED AND UNOBSCURED LUMINOUS ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2010, background): “2009, Merloni et al. 2010, Jahnke et al. 2009), and within the range of the input BH mass assumed in the numerical SED simulations.”
The Illustris simulation: the evolving population of black holes across cosmic time (2014, background): “…galaxy at higher redshifts, black holes are more massive than their z = 0 counterparts (e.g. Treu et al. 2004; Shields et al. 2006; Woo et al. 2008; Merloni et al. 2010, for a review see Kormendy & Ho 2013), systematic uncertainties, selection effects and insufficient data do not allow yet to…”
HST WFC3/IR OBSERVATIONS OF ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS HOST GALAXIES AT z ∼ 2: SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES GROW IN DISK GALAXIES (2010, background): “This is commensurate with the Eddington ratios of broad-line AGN of comparable X-ray luminosity at this redshift of ∼ 0.02 − 1 with the bulk at ∼ 0.3 (Merloni et al. 2010; Trump et al. 2009).”
The Mass Relations between Supermassive Black Holes and Their Host Galaxies at 1 < z < 2 with HST-WFC3 (2019, methodology): “At z>1, Merloni et al. (2010) decomposed the entire spectral energy distribution (SED) into a nuclear AGN and host galaxy components and found a positive evolution of the mass ratios of black holes to their host galaxies.”
The clustering of intermediate-redshift quasars as measured by the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (2012, methodology): “Merloni et al. (2010) infer evolution ofMBH − M⋆ from the zCOSMOS survey with a best-fit power-law of(1+z)0.68 –a factor of 2.3 betweenz = 0 and2.”
THE STELLAR MASS CONTENT OF SUBMILLIMETER-SELECTED GALAXIES (2010, methodology): “An alternate approach to fitting the near-IR excess emission in the observed SED for the purpose of estimating stellar masses is to fit a combination of stellar population synthesis models and AGN (type 1 and/or 2) templates from the literature (see, e.g., Merloni et al. 2010).”
Gravitational torque-driven black hole growth and feedback in cosmological simulations (2016, background): “Similar convergence may be indicated by recent observations of accreting black holes in star-forming galaxies at z 2 (Sun et al. 2015; see also Merloni et al. 2010).”
Bolometric luminosities and Eddington ratios of X-ray selected active galactic nuclei in the XMM-COSMOS survey (2012, background): “Of these, 96 use the Mg II line width: 74 sources are from Merloni et al. (2010) (with uncertainties of ∼ 0.25 dex) and 22 from Trump et al. (2009b) (with uncertainties of ∼ 0.4 dex).”
STELLAR MASSES FROM THE CANDELS SURVEY: THE GOODS-SOUTH AND UDS FIELDS (2014, background): “We caution that the stellar mass estimate may not recover the true value for bright unobscured AGNs, where ad hoc techniques should be adopted (Merloni et al. 2010; Santini et al. 2012b; Bongiorno et al. 2012).”
THE LICK AGN MONITORING PROJECT: THE MBH–σ* RELATION FOR REVERBERATION-MAPPED ACTIVE GALAXIES (2010, background): “…comparison is effectively a crucial link in establishing black hole masses for all AGNs across the universe and for all evolutionary studies (e.g., McLure & Dunlop 2004; Woo et al. 2006, 2008; Peng et al. 2006a,b; Netzer et al. 2007; Bennert et al. 2010; Jahnke et al. 2009; Merloni et al. 2010).”
THE CHANDRA COSMOS SURVEY. III. OPTICAL AND INFRARED IDENTIFICATION OF X-RAY POINT SOURCES (2012, background): “The masses of SMBHs in the nuclei of most nearby bulges are tightly proportional to bulge luminosity and velocity dispersion (Magorrian et al. 1998, Gebhardt et al. 2000, Ferrarese & Merrit 2000, Merloni et al. 2010).”
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; Salviander et al. 2007; Woo et al. 2008; Merloni et al. 2010; Shen & Kelly 2010).”
EDDINGTON-LIMITED ACCRETION AND THE BLACK HOLE MASS FUNCTION AT REDSHIFT 6 (2010, background): “In several studies it has been found that for AGN-selected samples, the ratio of MBH to Mbulge evolves to higher values at higher redshift (Walter et al. 2004; Peng et al. 2006; McLure et al. 2006; Riechers et al. 2008; Merloni et al. 2010; Wang et al. 2010).”
An ALMA [C ii] Survey of 27 Quasars at z > 5.94 (2018, background): “Studies exploiting spatially unresolved observations of the SED of fainter active galactic nuclei (e.g., Merloni et al. 2010) also suggest that black holes were “overmassive” at high redshift compared to galaxies of the same stellar mass in the local universe.”
The Spitzer/IRAC view of black hole–bulge scaling relations (2010, methodology): “6,bul relation rescaled using equation (6) to determine M?, in order to obtain a relation where M? is derived by the host luminosity as done in studies at high redshifts (e.g. Merloni et al. 2010).”