The importance of radio sources in accounting for the highest mass black holes

Mark Lacy; Susan Ridgway; Neil Trentham

doi:10.1016/s1387-6473(01)00182-8

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The importance of radio sources in accounting for the highest mass black holes

Mark Lacy·Susan Ridgway·Neil Trentham

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Abstract

The most massive black holes lie in the most massive elliptical galaxies, and at low-z all radio-loud AGNs lie in giant ellipticals. This strongly suggests a link between radio-loudness and black hole mass. We argue that the increase in the radio-loud fraction with AGN luminosity in optically-selected quasar samples is consistent with this picture. We also use the ratio of black holes today to quasars at z~2 to conclude that the most bolometrically-luminous AGN, either radio-loud or radio quiet, are constrained to have lifetimes <~10^8 yr. If radio sources are associated with black holes of >~10^9 M_sun at all redshifts, then the same lifetime constraint applies to all radio sources with luminosities above L_5GHz ~ 10^24 W/Hz/sr.

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Mark Lacy, Susan Ridgway, Neil Trentham. 1999-09-09. The importance of radio sources in accounting for the highest mass black holes. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1387-6473(01)00182-8

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