Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0310211
From: Francesco Haardt
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2003 14:37:28 GMT (37kb)
The Merging History of Massive Black Holes
Authors: M. Volonteri, F. Haardt, P. Madau, A. Sesana
Comments: 4 pages, 2 figures, Contribute to "Multiwavelength Cosmology", Mykonos, Greece, June 17-20, 2003
We investigate a hierarchical structure formation scenario describing the evolution of a Super Massive Black Holes (SMBHs) population. The seeds of the local SMBHs are assumed to be 'pregalactic' black holes, remnants of the first POPIII stars. As these pregalactic holes become incorporated through a series of mergers into larger and larger halos, they sink to the center owing to dynamical friction, accrete a fraction of the gas in the merger remnant to become supermassive, form a binary system, and eventually coalesce. A simple model in which the damage done to a stellar cusps by decaying BH pairs is cumulative is able to reproduce the observed scaling relation between galaxy luminosity and core size. An accretion model connecting quasar activity with major mergers and the observed BH mass-velocity dispersion correlation reproduces remarkably well the observed luminosity function of optically-selected quasars in the redshift range 1

• thanks - sergei1387 - October 10, 2003 - 02:06 UTC