Selection Bias in Observing the Cosmological Evolution of the M•-σ and M•-L Relationships

By Tod R. Lauer, S. Tremaine, D. Richstone, S. Faber. 2007

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Programs to observe evolution in the M•-σ or M•-L relations typically compare black hole masses, M•, in high-redshift galaxies selected by nuclear activity to M• in local galaxies selected by luminosity L or velocity dispersion σ. Because active galactic nucleus luminosity can depend on M•, selection effects are different for the two samples, potentially producing a false signal of evolution. Cosmic scatter in the M• relations means that the mean log L or log σ among galaxies that host a black hole of given M• may be substantially different than the log L or log σ obtained from inverting the M•-L or M•-σ relations for the same nominal M•. The bias is strongest at high M•, where the luminosity and dispersion functions of galaxies fall rapidly. The most massive black holes occur more often as rare outliers in galaxies of modest mass than in the even rarer high-mass galaxies, which would otherwise be the sole location of such black holes in the absence of cosmic scatter. Because of this bias, M• will typically appear to be too large in the distant sample for a given L or σ. For the largest black holes and the largest plausible cosmic scatter, the bias can reach a factor of 3 in M• for the M•-σ relation and 9 for the M•-L relation. Unfortunately, the cosmic scatter is not known well enough to correct for the bias. Measuring evolution of the M• relations requires object selection to be precisely defined and exactly the same at all redshifts.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f5a66273d86e55fbf6f57726c9bfe8a60806c14d

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Citations in the corpus

Journey to the MBH-σ relation: the fate of low-mass black holes in the Universe (2009, background): “…from https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-abstract/400/4/1911/1079324 by guest on 27 July 2018 1916 M. Volonteri and P. Natarajan accreting MBHs residing in the most massive galaxies (Lauer et al. 2007), assuming that MBHs accrete below the Eddington rate (e.g. Kelly, Vestergaard & Fan 2009).”
The Illustris simulation: the evolving population of black holes across cosmic time (2014, background): “At z > 0 there are other important biases stemming from samples based on the AGN luminosity (Lauer et al. 2007) and from the uncertainty associated with the single-epoch virial black hole mass estimators (Shen & Kelly 2010), which both lead to systematic overestimation of black hole masses (see…”
Gravitational waves from resolvable massive black hole binary systems and observations with Pulsar Timing Arrays (2008, methodology): “We generate a statistically significant sample of merging massive galaxies from the on-line Millennium database (http://www.g-vo.org/Millennium) and populate them with central MBHs according to different prescriptions (Tremaine et al. 2002, Mclure et al. 2006, Lauer et al. 2007, Tundo et al. 2007).”
The LABOCA survey of the Extended Chandra Deep Field-South: clustering of submillimetre galaxies (2011, background): “…estimates are highly uncertain (e.g. Marconi et al. 2008; Fine et al. 2010; Netzer & Marziani 2010) and may suffer from significant selection effects (e.g. Lauer et al. 2007; Kelly et al. 2010; Shen & Kelly 2010), and so conclusions about connections between populations are necessarily limited.”
The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments (2014, background): “This is because of the importance of systematic and selection effects for the observations (e.g. Lauer et al. 2007; Schulze & Wisotzki 2011) and because a bulge-to-disc decomposition would be necessary for the simulations since most low-mass galaxies are disky.”
Selection bias in dynamically measured supermassive black hole samples: its consequences and the quest for the most fundamental relation (2016, background): “…of black holes with their hosts is the subject of intense observational efforts, bothlocally and at high redshift (e.g., Shields et al. 2006; Lauer et al. 2007b; Treu et al. 2007; Woo et al. 2008; Gaskell & Kormendy 2009; Shankar et al. 2009a; Merloni et al. 2010; Schulze & Wisotzki 2011;…”
Coevolution (Or Not) of Supermassive Black Holes and Host Galaxies (2013, unknown): “18 NGC 5576: This is a core elliptical (Lauer et al. 2007) with a BH detection and M• measurement in Gültekin et al. (2009b).”
THE LICK AGN MONITORING PROJECT: THE MBH–σ* RELATION FOR REVERBERATION-MAPPED ACTIVE GALAXIES (2010, background): “Note that the selection bias investigated by Lauer et al. (2007) is not relevant to these reverberation objects since the bias mainly affects black holes in highmass galaxies where the host galaxy luminosity function is steeply falling.”
SELF-CONSISTENT MODELS OF THE AGN AND BLACK HOLE POPULATIONS: DUTY CYCLES, ACCRETION RATES, AND THE MEAN RADIATIVE EFFICIENCY (2007, background): “However, a more recent analysis by Lauer et al. (2007a) and Tundo et al. (2007) argues that these two methods do not provide the same answer.”
RELATIONS BETWEEN CENTRAL BLACK HOLE MASS AND TOTAL GALAXY STELLAR MASS IN THE LOCAL UNIVERSE (2015, background): “Lauer et al. (2007) expose important biases incurred when investigating the potential evolution of BH scaling relations by comparing samples at different redshifts with different selection criteria (e.g., AGN activity vs. host galaxy properties).”
The black hole mass–stellar velocity dispersion correlation: bulges versus pseudo-bulges (2008, methodology): “We note unbiased estimate for parameters β and α requires larger unbiased sample (both in Mbh and σ∗), or one must determine the selection bias carefully (e.g. Lauer et al. 2007b).”
DISSIPATION AND EXTRA LIGHT IN GALACTIC NUCLEI. IV. EVOLUTION IN THE SCALING RELATIONS OF SPHEROIDS (2008, background): “Selection effects (Lauer et al. 2007a) would be expected to explain the difference between some observational estimates that infer very strong (e.g. Walter et al. 2004) or rapid low-redshift (Woo et al. 2006) evolution and our predictions.”
The Romulus cosmological simulations: a physical approach to the formation, dynamics and accretion models of SMBHs (2016, background): “…have been attempts to quantify the evolution of this relationship (e.g. Alexander et al. 2008; Bennert et al. 2011; Bongiorno et al. 2014; Sun et al. 2015), these high redshift observations can be highly biased (Lauer et al. 2007) and cannot effectively probe lower mass galaxies and black holes.”
The quasar relation through cosmic time – II. Evidence for evolution from z = 3 to the present age (2009, background): “Lauer et al. (2007) showed that, because of the steepness of the bright end of the galaxy luminosity (mass) function and the presence of intrinsic scatter in the MBH–Lhost (Mhost) relation, very massive BHs are preferentially found in relatively faint (less massive) galaxies rather than in…”
Black Holes in Pseudobulges and Spheroidals: A Change in the Black Hole-Bulge Scaling Relations at Low Mass (2008, background): “The projections are defined by a very clean sample of elliptical and spheroidal galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, representing the most careful andmodern photometric measurements available from the recent study of Kormendy et al. (2008).”
How Mergers May Affect the Mass Scaling Relation between Gravitationally Bound Systems (2007, background): “If the quasar host galaxy studies are correct and are not significantly affected by biases pointed out by Lauer et al. (2007), then some other physics not considered here is responsible for causing a decline in the normalization of Γ with time (e.g. see Croton 2006; Hopkins et al. 2007; Fontanot et…”
Discriminating Between the Physical Processes that Drive Spheroid Size Evolution (2009, methodology): “…most massive, first-toassemble high-redshift systems) appear to lie significantly above the Shen et al. (2003) size–mass relation for more recently assembled field galaxies (see e.g. Batcheldor et al. 2007; Bernardi et al. 2007; Lauer et al. 2007c; von der Linden et al. 2007; Kormendy et al. 2009).”
Comparing and Calibrating Black Hole Mass Estimators for Distant Active Galactic Nuclei (2007, background): “…the slope of the size-luminosity relation, taking into account the host galaxy contamination (Bentz et al. 2006), and they set the virial coefficient by requiring that the MBH-σ∗ relation be the same for active and quiescent galaxies, modulo selection effects (Onken et al. 2004; Lauer et al. 2007).”
The first and second data releases of the Kilo-Degree Survey (2015, background): “These are hampered currently by potentially severe selection biases when comparing AGN-selected samples at high redshift to the host selected samples at low redshift (Willot et al. 2005; Lauer et al. 2007).”