A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
Coevolution of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies
Authors: Kotilainen JK, Decarli R, Falomo R, Labita M, Scarpa R, Treves A
Publication year: 2008
Journal:AIP Conference Proceedings
Journal name in sourceOBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE FOR BLACK HOLES IN THE UNIVERSE
Journal acronym: AIP CONF PROC
Volume: 1053
First page : 21
Last page: 24
Number of pages: 4
ISBN: 978-0-7354-0582-0
ISSN: 0094-243X
Abstract
Accretion onto a supermassive black hole (BH) is the most viable explanation for the huge emitted luminosity in active galaxies. Nowadays a wealth of observations have shown the presence of a BH in many nearby inactive bulges, suggesting that all massive spheroids harbor a BH. Moreover, at low redshift, fundamental correlations have been found between the BH mass and the luminosity (mass) and the central velocity dispersion of the host galaxy bulge. These correlations underline the important fact that there must be a strong relationship between the formation and evolution of massive bulges and their central BH. We discuss our ongoing program to investigate the cosmic evolution of this relationship. Optical (rest-frame UV) spectroscopy is used to determine the virial BH masses of a large sample of high redshift quasars for which the host galaxy luminosity is reliably determined from our previous VLT imaging.
Accretion onto a supermassive black hole (BH) is the most viable explanation for the huge emitted luminosity in active galaxies. Nowadays a wealth of observations have shown the presence of a BH in many nearby inactive bulges, suggesting that all massive spheroids harbor a BH. Moreover, at low redshift, fundamental correlations have been found between the BH mass and the luminosity (mass) and the central velocity dispersion of the host galaxy bulge. These correlations underline the important fact that there must be a strong relationship between the formation and evolution of massive bulges and their central BH. We discuss our ongoing program to investigate the cosmic evolution of this relationship. Optical (rest-frame UV) spectroscopy is used to determine the virial BH masses of a large sample of high redshift quasars for which the host galaxy luminosity is reliably determined from our previous VLT imaging.
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