QUASAR CLUSTERING FROM SDSS DR5: DEPENDENCES ON PHYSICAL PROPERTIES

By Yue Shen, M. Strauss, N. Ross, P. Hall, Yen-Ting Lin, Gordon Richards, D. Schneider, D. Weinberg, Andrew J. Connolly, Xiaohui Fan and 5 more. 2008

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Using a homogenous sample of 38,208 quasars with a sky coverage of ∼4000 deg2 drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release Five quasar catalog, we study the dependence of quasar clustering on luminosity, virial black hole (BH) mass, quasar color, and radio loudness. At z < 2.5, quasar clustering depends weakly on luminosity and virial BH mass, with typical uncertainty levels ∼10% for the measured correlation lengths. These weak dependences are consistent with models in which substantial scatter between quasar luminosity, virial BH mass, and the host dark matter halo mass has diluted any clustering difference, where halo mass is assumed to be the relevant quantity that best correlates with clustering strength. However, the most luminous and most massive quasars are more strongly clustered (at the ∼2σ level) than the remainder of the sample, which we attribute to the rapid increase of the bias factor at the high-mass end of host halos. We do not observe a strong dependence of clustering strength on quasar colors within our sample. On the other hand, radio-loud quasars are more strongly clustered than are radio-quiet quasars matched in redshift and optical luminosity (or virial BH mass), consistent with local observations of radio galaxies and radio-loud type 2 active galactic nuclei. Thus, radio-loud quasars reside in more massive and denser environments in the biased halo clustering picture. Using the Sheth et al. (2001) formula for the linear halo bias, the estimated host halo mass for radio-loud quasars is ∼1013 h−1 M☉, compared to ∼2 × 1012 h−1 M☉ for radio-quiet quasar hosts at z ∼ 1.5.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Ecology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/90bfd44569a5b07178e4c03bd67fbcd1e5d2510c

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Citations in the corpus

Clustering of intermediate redshift quasars using the final SDSS III-BOSS sample (2015, background): “…have informed similar studies atz < 2 from samples selected in the X-rays (e.g., Allevato et al. 2011; Krumpe et al. 2012) in the radio (e.g., Shen et al. 2009), in the infrared (e.g., Donoso et al.2014; DiPompeo et al. 2014a,b; Hickox et al. 2011) and, in general, in AGN samples selected…”
The realm of the galaxy protoclusters (2016, background): “Luminous QSOs and radio galaxies at high redshift are strongly clustered sources in average to massive dark matter halos (e.g., Shen et al., 2007, 2009; Overzier et al., 2003; Donoso et al., 2010; Falder et al., 2011; White et al., 2012; Eftekharzadeh et al., 2015).”
The clustering of the SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey DR14 quasar sample: measurement of the growth rate of structure from the anisotropic correlation function between redshift 0.8 and 2.2 (2018, methodology): “Moreover, previous programs such as the 2dF QSO Redshift Survey (2QZ, Croom et al. 2009), SDSS-I/II (Myers et al. 2007; Ross et al. 2009; Shen et al. 2009), SDSS-III/BOSS (White et al. 2012; Eftekharzadeh et al. 2015; Laurent et al. 2016), and a combination of quasar samples from the 2QZ and the…”
THE SDSS-III BARYON OSCILLATION SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY: THE QUASAR LUMINOSITY FUNCTION FROM DATA RELEASE NINE (2012, methodology): “Using the same arguments as in White et al. (2012), and the conversions of Croom et al. (2005) and Shen et al. (2009), we place the median BOSS quasar with a bolometric luminosity of Lbol = 2−4×10 46 erg s−1, in dark matter haloes of characteristic mass of ∼ 2 × 1012 h−1M⊙ at z ≈ 2.5.”
The clustering of intermediate-redshift quasars as measured by the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (2012, methodology): “…recently included enough objects to study their clustering with some precision (Porciani, Magliocchetti & Norberg 2004; Croom et al. 2005; Porciani & Norberg 2006; Hennawi et al. 2006a; Myers et al. 2006, 2007a,b; da Angela et al. 2008; Padmanabhan et al. 2009; Ross et al. 2009; Shen et al. 2009).”
CLUSTERING OF LOW-REDSHIFT (z ⩽ 2.2) QUASARS FROM THE SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY (2008, background): “…but not necessarily unexpected, since we are essentially sampling the same type of objects i.e. luminous AGN, powered by supermassive black holes accreting at or near their Eddington limits (Kollmeier et al. 2006; Shen et al. 2008), quite possibly in similar mass environments (see Section 5).”
Accretion-driven evolution of black holes: Eddington ratios, duty cycles and active galaxy fractions (2011, methodology): “However, reconciling the duty cycles predicted by SWM with the lower redshift clustering (z ≈ 1.5) measured by Shen et al. (2009) requires significant scatter (Σ ≈ 0.5 dex) between luminosity and halo mass to lower the predicted clustering amplitude (Shankar, Weinberg & Shen 2010c).”
The completed SDSS-IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey: BAO and RSD measurements from the anisotropic power spectrum of the quasar sample between redshift 0.8 and 2.2 (2020, background): “Due to their high intrinsic luminosity, quasars can be used as tracers of the large scale structure at high redshifts (Croom et al. 2009; Myers et al. 2007; Ross et al. 2009; Shen et al. 2009; White et al. 2012; Karagiannis et al. 2014; Eftekharzadeh et al. 2015; Laurent et al. 2016).”
The Coevolution of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes: Insights from Surveys of the Contemporary Universe (2014, background): “Shen et al. (2009) find that radio-loud QSOs reside in halos almost an order of magnitude larger than those of radio-quiet QSOs (though note that Donoso et al. 2010 do not find this strong signal amongst their z ∼ 0.6 sample).”
The MassiveBlack-II simulation: The evolution of haloes and galaxies to z ~ 0 (2014, background): “In general, the correlation lengths are in agreement with observational constraints (Shen et al. 2009) at low redshifts.”