Black Hole Masses and Eddington Ratios at 0.3 < z < 4

By Juna A. Kollmeier, C. Onken, C. Kochanek, A. Gould, D. Weinberg, M. Dietrich, R. Cool, A. Dey, Daniel J. Eisenstein, B. Jannuzi and 2 more. 2005

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We study the distribution of Eddington luminosity ratios, Lbol/LEdd, of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) discovered in the AGN and Galaxy Evolution Survey (AGES). We combine Hβ, Mg II, and C IV line widths with continuum luminosities to estimate black hole (BH) masses in 407 AGNs, covering the redshift range z ~ 0.3-4 and the bolometric luminosity range Lbol ~ 1045-1047 ergs s-1. The sample consists of X-ray or mid-infrared (24 μm) point sources with optical magnitude R ≤ 21.5 mag and optical emission-line spectra characteristic of AGNs. For the range of luminosity and redshift probed by AGES, the distribution of estimated Eddington ratios is well described as log-normal, with a peak at Lbol/LEdd ≃ 1/4 and a dispersion of 0.3 dex. Since additional sources of scatter are minimal, this dispersion must account for contributions from the scatter between estimated and true BH mass and the scatter between estimated and true bolometric luminosity. Therefore, we conclude that (1) neither of these sources of error can contribute more than ~0.3 dex rms, and (2) the true Eddington ratios of optically luminous AGNs are even more sharply peaked. Because the mass estimation errors must be smaller than ~0.3 dex, we can also investigate the distribution of Eddington ratios at fixed BH mass. We show for the first time that the distribution of Eddington ratios at fixed BH mass is peaked, and that the dearth of AGNs at a factor of ~10 below Eddington is real and not an artifact of sample selection. These results provide strong evidence that supermassive BHs gain most of their mass while radiating close to the Eddington limit, and they suggest that the fueling rates in luminous AGNs are ultimately determined by BH self-regulation of the accretion flow rather than galactic-scale dynamical disturbances.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/87f4297c1e5a6ca1d875a1120b701f60bcb7674d

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Citations in the corpus

REVERBERATION MAPPING MEASUREMENTS OF BLACK HOLE MASSES IN SIX LOCAL SEYFERT GALAXIES (2010, background): “In addition, masses can be estimated for large samples of objects (e.g., McLure & Dunlop 2004; Kollmeier et al. 2006; Salviander et al. 2007; Shen et al. 2008; Vestergaard et al. 2008), facilitating studies of the BH-galaxy connection and its evolution across cosmic time (e.g., Salviander et al.…”
A CATALOG OF QUASAR PROPERTIES FROM SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY DATA RELEASE 7 (2010, background): “…et al. 1996; McLure & Jarvis 2002; Richards et al. 2002b; McLure & Dunlop 2004; Bachev et al. 2004; Dietrich & Hamann 2004; Baskin & Laor 2005; Kollmeier et al. 2006; Fine et al. 2006, 2008; Bonning et al. 2007; Salviander et al. 2007; Sulentic et al. 2007; Shen et al. 2008a,b; Hu et al.…”
PRIMUS: THE DEPENDENCE OF AGN ACCRETION ON HOST STELLAR MASS AND COLOR (2011, result): “They find that broad-line QSOs are predominantly at higher λEdd∼ 0.1, consistent with other studies of the Eddington ratio distribution of QSOs (e.g., Kollmeier et al. 2006; Gavignaud et al. 2008; Kelly et al. 2010).”
EDDINGTON-LIMITED ACCRETION AND THE BLACK HOLE MASS FUNCTION AT REDSHIFT 6 (2010, background): “Studies up to z = 4 show that the λ distribution in luminosity and redshift bins is usually a lognormal which shifts to higher λ and narrows at higher luminosities (Kollmeier et al. 2006; Shen et al. 2008).”
MASS FUNCTIONS OF THE ACTIVE BLACK HOLES IN DISTANT QUASARS FROM THE LARGE BRIGHT QUASAR SURVEY, THE BRIGHT QUASAR SURVEY, AND THE COLOR-SELECTED SAMPLE OF THE SDSS FALL EQUATORIAL STRIPE (2009, result): “This distribution is consistent with earlier studies (e.g., Warner et al. 2003; Shemmer et al. 2004; McLure & Dunlop 2004; Vestergaard 2004; Kollmeier et al. 2006; Shen et al. 2008; Netzer & Traktenbrot 2007) and results showing that distant quasars are more actively accreting than local quasars…”
A synthesis model for AGN evolution: supermassive black holes growth and feedback modes (2008, background): “The most luminous sources, as those falling into the standard definition of Quasars and broad lined AGN, are most likely accreting at a high rate, close to the Eddington limit (McLure & Dunlop 2004; Kollmeier et al. 2006).”
A Cosmological Framework for the Co-Evolution of Quasars, Supermassive Black Holes, and Elliptical Galaxies. I. Galaxy Mergers and Quasar Activity (2007, background): “…where a large fraction of the most massive BHs are in place by z ¼ 2, while less massive BHs form later (essentially required by the fact that few 109 M BHs are active at low redshift, while a very high fraction are active at z 2; seeMcLure& Dunlop 2004; Kollmeier et al. 2006; Fine et al. 2006).”
THE POPULATION OF VISCOSITY- AND GRAVITATIONAL WAVE-DRIVEN SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE BINARIES AMONG LUMINOUS ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2009, background): “Reasonable fiducial values appropriate to the bright quasar phase are fEdd ≈ 0.3 (Kollmeier et al. 2006) and, as mentioned above, tQ ≈ few × 107 yr (Martini 2004).”
The cosmic evolution of massive black holes in the Horizon-AGN simulation (2016, background): “This is the population that dominates the LF of quasars (Kollmeier et al. 2006).”
A Log-Quadratic Relation for Predicting Supermassive Black Hole Masses from the Host Bulge Sérsic Index (2006, background): “…with the uppermost mass reported in several observational studies (e.g., McLure et al. 2004; Xie et al. 2004; Pian et al. 2005; Sulentic et al. 2006; Kollmeier et al. 2006) and intriguingly with the upper mass limit for axion bubbles (Svidzinsky 2006) and neutrino balls (Richter et al. 2006).”
Clustering of High-Redshift (z ≥ 2.9) Quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2007, background): “However, the high-luminosity high redshift quasarsin our sample have close to Eddington luminosities (Kollmeier et al. 2006), and therefore we may well expect a strong dependence of the clustering signal on luminosity (Hopkins et al. 2006).”
THE RADIATIVE EFFICIENCY OF ACCRETION FLOWS IN INDIVIDUAL ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2010, background): “…a much weaker dependence than expected for constant Lbol/LEdd and η. Studies with large QSO samples that assume a constant bolometric correction and BLR mass estimates generally find Lbol/LEdd either nearly constant (Kollmeier et al. 2006) or decreasing slightly (Steinhardt & Elvis 2010) with M .”
ESTIMATING BLACK HOLE MASSES IN ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI USING THE Mg ii λ2800 EMISSION LINE (2009, methodology): “L relation, and of Kollmeier et al. (2006), who used a very steep relation of RMg ii ∝ L0.”
The Hard X-Ray Spectrum as a Probe for Black Hole Growth in Radio-Quiet Active Galactic Nuclei (2008, background): “…around a value of∼0.3 (0.28 in our sample of 35 sources), with a typical dispersion of a factor of ∼5 around that value (e.g., McLure & Dunlop 2004; Kollmeier et al. 2006; Netzer et al. 2007; Shen et al. 2008), Γ values for such sources typically lie in the narrow range of ∼1.5–2.5 (1.2–2.6 for…”
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): “As typical for optically selected samples of type–1 AGN/QSOs (Kollmeier et al. 2006; Gavignaud et al. 2008; Trump et al. 2009, and references therein), the distribution of Eddington ratios is quite narrowly distributed, with a median of ≈ 0.1.”
Measuring the Masses of Supermassive Black Holes (2014, background): “This was subsequently extended to the UV emission lines Mg iiλ2798 and C ivλ1549 (McLure & Jarvis 2002; Vestergaard 2002, 2004; Vestergaard & Peterson 2006; Kollmeier et al. 2006) to allow applications at higher redshift.”
SIZES AND TEMPERATURE PROFILES OF QUASAR ACCRETION DISKS FROM CHROMATIC MICROLENSING (2010, methodology): “Following Pooley et al. (2007), we set fEdd = 0.25 (Kollmeier et al. 2006) and η = 0.15 (Yu & Tremaine 2002).”
A GLOBAL THREE-DIMENSIONAL RADIATION MAGNETO-HYDRODYNAMIC SIMULATION OF SUPER-EDDINGTON ACCRETION DISKS (2014, background): “Implications for Super-massive Black Hole Growth and Feedback If mass estimates based on emission line widths are correct, the majority of observed quasars are accreting below or, at most, slightly above the Eddington limit (e.g. Kollmeier et al. 2006).”