On Black Hole Masses and Radio Loudness in Active Galactic Nuclei

By Ari Laor. 2000

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The distribution of radio to optical fluxes in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) is bimodal. The physical origin for this bimodality is not understood. In this Letter I describe observational evidence, based on the Boroson & Green Palomar-Green quasar sample, that the radio loudness bimodality is strongly related to the black hole mass (MBH). Nearly all PG quasars with MBH > 109 M☉ are radio-loud, while quasars with MBH < 3 × 108 M☉ are practically all radio-quiet. This result is consistent with the dependence of quasar host galaxy morphology on radio loudness. There is no simple physical explanation for this result, but it may provide a clue as to how jets are formed near massive black holes. The radio loudness-black hole mass relationship suggests that the properties of various types of AGN may be largely set by three basic parameters: MBH, L/LEdd, and inclination angle.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

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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).”
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).”
Nuclear Luminosities and Radio Loudness of Seyfert Nuclei (2001, background): “Laor (2000) explicitly argues that the bulges of spiral galaxies cannot produce radio-loud AGNs.”
Active Galactic Nucleus Black Hole Masses and Bolometric Luminosities (2002, background): “There have been suggestions that black hole mass is a factor in radio loudness, such that R > 1 (R L5GHz=L5000G) requires MBHe109 M (Laor 2000).”
THE RADIATIVE EFFICIENCY OF ACCRETION FLOWS IN INDIVIDUAL ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2010, background): “Also, the small transition range of logM = 8.5− 9, where the PG quasars transform from radio-quiet to radio-loud, suggests a small uncertainty in M (Laor 2000).”
Radio-loud Narrow-Line Type 1 Quasars (2006, background): “…which objects are preferentially radio loud, and whether or not radio-louds and radio-quiets show the same spread in their black hole masses (e.g., Laor 2000, Lacy et al. 2001, Oshlack et al. 2002, Woo and Urry 2002, Shields et al. 2003, McLure & Jarvis 2004, Metcalf & Magliocchetti 2006, Liu et…”
Intergalactic Magnetic Fields from Quasar Outflows (2001, background): “Laor (2000) has argued for such a relation in radio-loud quasars on empirical grounds, although there is no firm physical theory for the existence of such a cutoff.”
Broad Emission-Line Shifts in Quasars: An Orientation Measure for Radio-Quiet Quasars? (2002, background): “These include luminosity, the Eddington ratio, accretion rate, black hole mass, black hole spin and age (e.g., Laor 2000).”
An Evolutionary Scenario for Blazar Unification (2001, background): “Also, the distribution of central black-hole masses in nearby galaxies appears to extend to larger values than the distribution of radio-quasar black-hole masses (Laor 2000), consistent with some fraction of present-day giant elliptical galaxies hosting the remnants of earlier quasar activity.”
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.”
Early Growth and Efficient Accretion of Massive Black Holes at High Redshift (2003, result): “The two radio types of the intermediate-redshift quasars, which are matched in luminosity and redshift, display no significant MBH difference, in contrast to some studies claiming blackholes of RLQs are more massive (e.g., Laor 2000; McLure & Dunlop 2001).”
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.”
On the black hole–bulge mass relation in active and inactive galaxies (2001, result): “…black holes of radio-loud quasars are on average more massive than their radio-quiet counterparts is consistent with the results of our recent host-galaxy study (Dunlop et al. 2001; McLure et al. 1999), our previous Hb linewidth study (MD01) and the recent linewidth study of the PG by Laor (2000).”
Accretion states and radio loudness in active galactic nuclei: analogies with X-ray binaries (2006, background): “It has been suggested that instead of a correlation between R and black hole mass, there is a hard switch in radio loudness for sources with BH masses M > 108 M (e.g. Laor 2000; McLure & Jarvis 2004).”
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 (2001, methodology): “INTERPRETATION Laor (2000) has suggested that quasars can be characterized by three parameters, namely, black hole mass, the ratio of bolometric luminosity to the Eddington luminosity , andL/LEdd orientation.”
Black Hole Mass and Eddington Ratio as Drivers for the Observable Properties of Radio-loud and Radio-quiet QSOs (2001, methodology): “Black hole masses for this sample have been estimated using the formula derived by Laor (2000).”
Quasars, their host galaxies and their central black holes (2001, result): “A similar conclusion was also reached by Laor (2000) from a study of the virial masses of PG quasars.”