Bibcode
Cisternas, Mauricio; Jahnke, Knud; Bongiorno, Angela; Inskip, Katherine J.; Impey, Chris D.; Koekemoer, Anton M.; Merloni, Andrea; Salvato, Mara; Trump, Jonathan R.
Bibliographical reference
The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Volume 741, Issue 1, article id. L11 (2011).
Advertised on:
11
2011
Citations
108
Refereed citations
102
Description
We present new constraints on the ratio of black hole (BH) mass to total
galaxy stellar mass at 0.3 < z < 0.9 for a sample of 32 type-1
active galactic nuclei (AGNs) from the XMM-COSMOS survey covering the
range M BH ~ 107.2 - 8.7 M sun.
Virial M BH estimates based on Hβ are available from the
COSMOS Magellan/IMACS survey. We use high-resolution Hubble Space
Telescope (HST) imaging to decompose the light of each type-1 AGN and
host galaxy, and employ a specially built mass-to-light ratio to
estimate the stellar masses (M *). The M BH-M
* ratio shows a zero offset with respect to the local
relation for galactic bulge masses, and we also find no evolution in the
mass ratio M BH/M *vprop(1 + z)0.02 ±
0.34 up to z ~ 0.9. Interestingly, at the high-M BH end
there is a positive offset from the z = 0 relation, which can be fully
explained by a mass function bias with a cosmic scatter of
σμ = 0.3, reaffirming that the intrinsic
distribution is consistent with zero evolution. From our results we
conclude that since z ~ 0.9 no substantial addition of stellar mass is
required: the decline in star formation rates and merger activity at z
< 1 support this scenario. Nevertheless, given that a significant
fraction of these galaxies show a disk component, their bulges are
indeed undermassive. This is a direct indication that for the last 7 Gyr
the only essential mechanism required for these galaxies to obey the z =
0 relation is a redistribution of stellar mass to the bulge, likely
driven by secular processes, i.e., internal instabilities and minor
merging.
Based on observations with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, obtained
at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by AURA
Inc., under NASA Contract NAS 5-26555; the XMM-Newton, an ESA science
mission with instruments and contributions directly funded by ESA Member
States and NASA; and on data collected at the Magellan Telescope, which
is operated by the Carnegie Observatories.