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ABSTRACT Cold quasars are a rare population of luminous, unobscured quasars associated with host galaxies that have a high star formation rate. We aimed to study the host galaxies of 64 of these cold quasars in order to probe how the supermassive black holes and host galaxies were co-evolving. We compiled data from the XMM-XXL survey and cross-matched with the VHS, WISE, and HerMES surveys to obtain multiwavelength photometry spanning the X-ray to the infrared and including optical spectroscopy. From the data, we calculated the supermassive black hole’s mass using broad emission from the Mg ii and Hbeta lines. We compared this with the stellar mass of the entire galaxy and found that the black holes are significantly more massive than would be predicted by local relations, indicating that the majority of black hole growth precedes the bulk of the the stellar mass formation. In addition to this, we created a spectral energy distribution for each galaxy to calculate the star formation rate. We compared the star formation rate with the black hole accretion rate and find that the stellar mass is rapidly increasing at a relative rate faster than the black hole growth, supporting the picture where the black hole grows first.
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Tracing black hole and galaxy co-evolution in the Romulus simulations
ABSTRACT We study the link between supermassive black hole growth and the stellar mass assembly of their host galaxies in the state-of-the-art Romulus suite of simulations. The cosmological simulations Romulus25 and RomulusC employ innovative recipes for the seeding, accretion, and dynamics of black holes in the field and cluster environments, respectively. We find that the black hole accretion rate traces the star formation rate among star-forming galaxies. This result holds for stellar masses between 108 and 1012 solar masses, with a very weak dependence on host halo mass or redshift. The inferred relation between accretion rate and star formation rate does not appear to depend on environment, as no difference is seen in the cluster/proto-cluster volume compared to the field. A model including the star formation rate, the black hole-to-stellar mass ratio, and the cold gas fraction can explain about 70 per cent of all variations in the black hole accretion rate among star-forming galaxies. Finally, bearing in mind the limited volume and resolution of these cosmological simulations, we find no evidence for a connection between black hole growth and galaxy mergers, on any time-scale and at any redshift. Black holes and their galaxies assemble in tandem in these simulations, regardless of the larger scale intergalactic environment, suggesting that black hole growth simply follows star formation on galactic scales.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1743747
- PAR ID:
- 10188516
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Volume:
- 489
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0035-8711
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 802 to 819
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stz2161
