Do You See What I See? Exploring the Consequences of Luminosity Limits in Black Hole–Galaxy Evolution Studies
Do You See What I See? Exploring the Consequences of Luminosity Limits in Black Hole–Galaxy Evolution Studies
复制标题
你看到我所看到的了吗？探索黑洞-星系演化研究中的光度限制的后果
DOI：
10.3847/1538-4357/aa7632
复制
发表时间：
2017
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
M. Dipompeo
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Mackenzie L. Jones;R. Hickox;S. Mutch;D. Croton;A. Ptak;M. Dipompeo
在活动星系核（AGN）与其宿主星系之间联系的研究中，对于这种联系的一些关键方面存在广泛的分歧。这些分歧很大程度上源于对整个活动星系核总体的本质缺乏了解。最近探索这种联系的尝试利用观察和模拟来纠正缺失的群体，但目前受到内在偏差和复杂模型的限制。我们对星系演化进行了简单的模拟，并为 AGN 活动添加了新的规定，将星系生长与暗物质晕特性以及 AGN 活动与恒星形成联系起来。我们明确地对选择效应进行建模，以产生“观察到的”活动星系核种群，以便与当地宇宙的观察结果和经验驱动模型进行比较。这使我们能够绕过试图通过反转选择效应来推断 AGN 种群的模型固有的困难。我们研究了根据光度阈值或爱丁顿比选择活动星系核对“观察到的”活动星系核群体的影响。通过限制我们的模型 AGN 样本的光度，我们能够重新创建观测到的局部 AGN 光度函数和特定的恒星形成-恒星质量分布，并表明，尽管选择低质量黑洞存在挑战，但使用爱丁顿比阈值通过选择整个范围的生长黑洞，可以减少样本中的偏差。我们发现使用这些不同的阈值选择 AGN 会产生具有不同 AGN 宿主星系属性的样本。
In studies of the connection between active galactic nuclei (AGNs) and their host galaxies, there is widespread disagreement on some key aspects of the connection. These disagreements largely stem from a lack of understanding of the nature of the full underlying AGN population. Recent attempts to probe this connection utilize both observations and simulations to correct for a missed population, but presently are limited by intrinsic biases and complicated models. We take a simple simulation for galaxy evolution and add a new prescription for AGN activity to connect galaxy growth to dark matter halo properties and AGN activity to star formation. We explicitly model selection effects to produce an “observed” AGN population for comparison with observations and empirically motivated models of the local universe. This allows us to bypass the difficulties inherent in models that attempt to infer the AGN population by inverting selection effects. We investigate the impact of selecting AGNs based on thresholds in luminosity or Eddington ratio on the “observed” AGN population. By limiting our model AGN sample in luminosity, we are able to recreate the observed local AGN luminosity function and specific star formation-stellar mass distribution, and show that using an Eddington ratio threshold introduces less bias into the sample by selecting the full range of growing black holes, despite the challenge of selecting low-mass black holes. We find that selecting AGNs using these various thresholds yield samples with different AGN host galaxy properties.