What Is the Highest Plausible Redshift of Luminous Quasars?

By Zoltán Haiman, Abraham Loeb. 2000

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The recent discoveries of luminous quasars at high redshifts imply that black holes more massive than a few billion solar masses were already assembled when the universe was less than a billion years old. We show that the existence of these black holes is not surprising in popular hierarchical models of structure formation. For example, the black hole needed to power the quasar SDSS 1044-0125 at z = 5.8 could arise naturally from the growth of stellar-mass seeds forming at z > 10, when typical values are assumed for the radiative accretion efficiency (~0.1) and the bolometric accretion luminosity in Eddington units (~1). Nevertheless, SDSS 1044-0125 yields a nontrivial constraint on a combination of these parameters. Extrapolating our model to future surveys, we derive the highest plausible redshift for quasars that are not lensed or beamed, as a function of their apparent magnitude. We find that at a limiting magnitude of K ~ 20, quasar surveys can yield strong constraints on the growth of supermassive black holes out to z ~ 10.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/edc0ffce8ab68b66a19f3280457e536085178e2f

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Citations in the corpus

Fluctuations in the high-redshift Lyman–Werner background: close halo pairs as the origin of supermassive black holes (2008, background): “…the growth of these SMBHs due to accretion and mergers, starting from stellar–mass seed BHs left behind by the first generation of stars (e.g. Haiman & Loeb 2001; Haiman 2004; Yoo & Miralda-Escudé 2004; Bromley, Somerville & Fabian 2004; Shapiro 2005; Volonteri & Rees 2006; Li et al. 2007;…”
Quasar Feedback: The Missing Link in Structure Formation (2004, background): “…have been suggested within the cold dark matter paradigm (Efstathiou & Rees 1988; Haehnelt & Rees 1993; Kauffmann & Haehnelt 2000; Nulsen & Fabian 2000; Monaco et al. 2000; Haiman & Loeb 2001; Wyithe & Loeb 2002; Menci et al. 2003; Bromley et al. 2004), these can be roughly divided into two types.”
The aftermath of the first stars: massive black holes (2006, background): “…holes must have been rapid enough to account for the powerful quasars observed at redshifts of z >∼ 6 (e.g. Fan et al. 2004, 2006), believed to be fueled by accretion onto supermassive black holes (SMBHs) with masses ∼ 109 M⊙ (e.g. Haiman & Loeb 2001; Volonteri & Rees 2005; Volonteri & Rees 2006).”
A Survey of z > 5.8 Quasars in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. I. Discovery of Three New Quasars and the Spatial Density of Luminous Quasars at z ∼ 6 (2001, background): “The assembly of such massive objects in a timescale shorter than 1 Gyr yields constraints on models of the formation of massive black holes (e.g., Haiman & Loeb 2001).”
Pathways to massive black holes and compact star clusters in pre-galactic dark matter haloes with virial temperatures ≳10 000 K (2008, background): “The presence of super-massive black holes (SMBHs) as massive as 3 × 109 at these early times (Haiman & Loeb 2001; Fan 2001; Fan et al. 2006) requires a rapid and efficient build-up of SMBHs, challenging models based on Eddington limited growth of stellar mass black holes (e.g. Volonteri et al.…”
Supermassive black hole formation by direct collapse: keeping protogalactic gas H2 free in dark matter haloes with virial temperatures Tvir > rsim 104 K (2009, background): “First, the early seeds must accrete near the Eddington rate for a Hubble time, without any prolonged interruption (Haiman & Loeb 2001), which requires that the BHs are continuously surrounded by dense gas (e.g. Turner 1991; Alvarez et al 2009).”
Probing the Ionization State of the Universe at z > 6 (2003, background): “The e-folding timescale for an accreting black hole is tacc = 4× 107 yr ( 0.1 ) η−1 , (8) where is the radiative efficiency and η is the ratio of the quasar’s luminosity to the Eddington luminosity (Haiman & Loeb 2001).”
The Halo Mass Function: High-Redshift Evolution and Universality (2007, background): “At higher redshifts, the halo mass function is important in probing quasar abundance and formation sites (Haiman & Loeb 2001), as well as the reionization history of the universe (Furlanetto et al. 2006).”
ACCRETION ONTO THE FIRST STELLAR-MASS BLACK HOLES (2007, background): “…radiating at the Eddington limit with ten per cent radiative efficiency, beginni g at z > 20, it will attain a final mass atz = 6.4 of greater than 109M⊙, implying that accretion onto these black holes is a viable explanation for thez > ∼ 6 quasars (e.g., Haiman & Loeb 2001; Volonteri & Rees 2006).”
Local supermassive black holes, relics of active galactic nuclei and the X-ray background (2003, unknown): “For instance, to grow a BH from 103 M⊙ to 10 9 M⊙ with λ = 1 and ǫ = 0.1, one would need ∼ 14ts i.e. ∼ 6×108 yr (see also Haiman & Loeb 2001).”
Massive black hole seeds from low angular momentum material (2003, background): “Nevertheless, it is generally easier to understand the population of z 6 quasars if massive seeds are present (see also Haiman & Loeb 2001, for a related discussion).”
Evolution of the mass function of dark matter haloes (2003, background): “For example, the number density of high-redshift (z 6) QSOs, which are thought to be hosted by haloes at 5σ peaks in the fluctuation field (Haiman & Loeb 2001; Fan et al. 2001), are likely to be overpredicted by at least a factor of 50 per cent.”
Early Growth and Efficient Accretion of Massive Black Holes at High Redshift (2003, background): “The presence of luminous, massive2 quasars at redshift 6, when the Universe was less than 10% of its present age, already place much-needed constraints on models of the earliest structure formation (Turner 1991; Haiman & Loeb 2001; Volonteri et al. 2002).”
THE ASSEMBLY OF SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES AT HIGH REDSHIFTS (2008, background): “…result, in some cases, the host halo mass predicted for the z = 6 quasars is as low as 1011 M , which is an order of magnitude lower than would be predicted from the extrapolation of the locally measured m/M relation, or from the inferred space density of the host halos (e.g., Haiman & Loeb 2001).”
The First Stars (2003, background): “…however (e.g., Umemura et al. 1993, Loeb & Rasio 1994, Eisenstein & Loeb 1995), are likely to have formed in more massive host systems, at redshifts z 10 (Haiman & Loeb 2001, Bromm & Loeb 2003a), and certainly before z ∼ 6.4, which is the redshift of the most distant quasar known (Fan et al. 2003).”