2006/02/16 by F. Marulli, D. Crociani, Marta Volonteri +3 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Accretion (finance) #Active galactic nucleus #Astronomy #Astronomy and Astrophysical Research #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics #Black hole (networking) #Eddington luminosity #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Galaxy #Galaxy formation and evolution #Halo #Luminosity #Luminosity function #Physics #Population #Quasar #Redshift #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2006.10195.x
published as Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc.368:1269-1280,2006 · 13 pages, 9 figures. Accepted by MNRAS
arxiv created 2006/02/16 · openalex publication_date 2006/03/30 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We investigate the ability of hierarchical models of quasi-stellar object (QSO) formation and evolution to match the observed luminosity, number counts and spatial clustering of quasars at redshift z < 2. These models assume that the QSO emission is triggered by galaxy mergers, that the mass of the central black hole (BH) correlates with halo properties and that quasars shine at their Eddington luminosity except, perhaps, during the very early stages of evolution. We find that models based on simple analytic approximations successfully reproduce the observed B-band QSO luminosity function (LF) at all redshifts, provided that some mechanisms is advocated to quench mass accretion within haloes larger than ∼1013 M⊙ that host bright quasars. These models also match the observed strength of QSO clustering at z∼ 0.8. At larger redshifts, however, they underpredict the QSO biasing which, instead, is correctly reproduced by semi-analytic models in which the halo merger history and associated BHs are followed by Monte Carlo realizations of the merger hierarchy. We show that the disagreement between the LF predicted by semi-analytic models and observations can be ascribed to the use of B-band data, which are a biased tracer of the quasar population, due to obscuration.