Coevolution of Supermassive Black Holes and Their Host Galaxies

Kotilainen, J. K.; Falomo, R.; Labita, M.; Scarpa, R.; Treves, A.
Bibliographical reference

The Central Engine of Active Galactic Nuclei, ASP Conference Series, Vol. 373, proceedings of the conference held 16-21 October, 2006 at Xi'an Jioatong University, Xi'an, China. Edited by Luis C. Ho and Jian-Min Wang, p.682

Advertised on:
10
2007
Number of authors
5
IAC number of authors
1
Citations
1
Refereed citations
1
Description
Accretion onto a black hole (BH) is the most viable explanation for the huge emitted power in active galaxies. A wealth of observations have shown the presence of a BH in many nearby inactive bulges, suggesting that all massive spheroids harbor a BH. 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, indicating 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. Rest-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.