The fundamental plane of black hole activity and the census of the local black holes' population

Studying a sample of both strongly and weakly active galactic nuclei with measured masses and 5 GHz and 2-10 keV core luminosities, together with a few galactic black holes simultaneously observed in the radio and X-ray bands, Merloni, Heinz, & Di Matteo (2003) showed that the sources are correl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inarXiv.org
Main Author Merloni, Andrea
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published Ithaca Cornell University Library, arXiv.org 08.01.2004
Subjects
Active galactic nuclei
Deposition
Fluxes
Luminosity
Radio
Red shift
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Summary:Studying a sample of both strongly and weakly active galactic nuclei with measured masses and 5 GHz and 2-10 keV core luminosities, together with a few galactic black holes simultaneously observed in the radio and X-ray bands, Merloni, Heinz, & Di Matteo (2003) showed that the sources are correlated through a ``fundamental plane'' relationship in the three-dimensional (log L_R, log L_X, log M) space. Here I elaborate on how such a relationship can be used to infer directly mass and accretion rate of any black hole given its radio and X-ray fluxes, complementing the information obtained from optical/UV surveys. As an example, I show how the local X-ray and radio luminosity functions, coupled with the black hole mass function derived from the M-\sigma relation, provide us with an accretion rate function. It is found that the typical X-ray Eddington ratio of an active black hole at redshift zero is about 5 \times 10^{-4}.
ISSN:2331-8422