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Martin Elvis

Publications and source records attributed to Martin Elvis.

At least 127 records · Page 7Linked to original sources
arXiv2010

The Quasar Mass-Luminosity Plane I: A Sub-Eddington Limit for Quasars

We use 62185 quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 5 sample to explore the relationship between black hole mass and luminosity. Black hole masses were estimated based on the widths of their Hβ, MgII and CIV lines and adjacent continuum luminosities using standard virial mass estimate scaling laws. We find that, over the range 0.2 < z < 4.0, the most luminous low-mass quasars are at their Eddington luminosity, but the most luminous high-mass quasars in each redshift bin fall short of their Eddington luminosities, with the shortfall of the order of 10 or more at 0.2 < z < 0.6. We examine several potential sources of measurement uncertainty or bias and show that none of them can account for this effect. We also show the statistical uncertainty in virial mass estimation to have an upper bound of ~0.15 dex, smaller than the 0.4 dex previously reported. We also examine the highest mass quasars in every redshift bin in an effort to learn more about quasars that are about to cease their luminous accretion. We conclude that the quasar mass-luminosity locus contains a number of new puzzles that must be explained theoretically.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2010

The Quasar Mass-Luminosity Plane III: Smaller Errors on Virial Mass Estimates

We use 62185 quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) DR5 sample to explore the quasar mass-luminosity plane view of virial mass estimation. Previous work shows deviations of ~0.4 dex between virial and reverberation masses. The decline in quasar number density for the highest Eddington ratio quasars at each redshift provides an upper bound of between 0.13 and 0.29 dex for virial mass estimate statistical uncertainties. Across different redshift bins, the maximum possible MgII mass uncertainties average 0.15 dex, while Hβ uncertainties average 0.21 dex and CIV uncertainties average 0.27 dex. Any physical spread near the high-Eddington-ratio boundary will produce a more restrictive bound. A comparison of the sub-Eddington boundary slope using Hβ and MgII masses finds better agreement with uncorrected MgII masses than with recently proposed corrections. The best agreement for these bright objects is produced by a multiplicative correction by a factor of 1.19, smaller than the factor of 1.8 previously reported as producing the best agreement for the entire SDSS sample.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2010

Hot-Dust-Poor Type 1 Active Galactic Nuclei in the COSMOS Survey

We report a sizable class of type 1 active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with unusually weak near-infrared (1-3μm) emission in the XMM-COSMOS type 1 AGN sample. The fraction of these "hot-dust-poor" AGNs increases with redshift from 6% at lowredshift (z < 2) to 20% at moderate high redshift (2 < z < 3.5). There is no clear trend of the fraction with other parameters: bolometric luminosity, Eddington ratio, black hole mass, and X-ray luminosity. The 3μm emission relative to the 1μm emission is a factor of 2-4 smaller than the typical Elvis et al. AGN spectral energy distribution (SED), which indicates a "torus" covering factor of 2%-29%, a factor of 3-40 smaller than required by unified models. The weak hot dust emission seems to expose an extension of the accretion disk continuum in some of the source SEDs. We estimate the outer edge of their accretion disks to lie at $(0.3-2.0) /times 10^4$ Schwarzschild radii, ~10-23 times the gravitational stability radii. Formation scenarios for these sources are discussed.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2010

Extended X-ray Emission in the HI Cavity of NGC 4151: Galaxy-scale AGN Feedback?

We present the Chandra discovery of soft diffuse X-ray emission in NGC 4151 (L[0.5-2keV]~10^{39} erg s$^{-1}$), extending ~2 kpc from the active nucleus and filling in the cavity of the HI material. The best fit to the X-ray spectrum requires either a kT~0.25 keV thermal plasma or a photoionized component. In the thermal scenario, hot gas heated by the nuclear outflow would be confined by the thermal pressure of the HI gas and the dynamic pressure of inflowing neutral material in the galactic disk. In the case of photoionization, the nucleus must have experienced an Eddington limit outburst. For both scenarios, the AGN-host interaction in NGC 4151 must have occured relatively recently (some 10^4 yr ago). This very short timescale to the last episode of high activity phase may imply such outbursts occupy $\gtrsim$1% of AGN lifetime.

astro-ph.GA↗
arXiv2010

Suzaku Monitoring of the Iron K Emission Line in the Type 1 AGN NGC 5548

We present 7 sequential weekly observations of NGC 5548 conducted in 2007 with the \textit{Suzaku} X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (XIS) in the 0.2-12 keV band and Hard X-ray Detector (HXD) in 10-600 keV band. The iron K$α$ line is well detected in all seven observations and K$β$ line is also detected in four observations. In this paper, we investigate the origin of the Fe K lines using both the width of the line and the reverberation mapping method. With the co-added XIS and HXD spectra, we identify Fe K$α$ and K$β$ line at 6.396$_{-0.007}^{+0.009}$ keV and 7.08$_{-0.05}^{+0.05}$ keV, respectively. The width of line obtained from the co-added spectra is 38$_{-18}^{+16}$ eV ($\textrm{FWHM}=4200_{-2000}^{+1800}$ km/s) which corresponds to a radius of 20$_{-10}^{+50}$ light days, for the virial production of $1.220\times10^7$ M$_{\odot}$ in NCG 5548. To quantitatively investigate the origin of the narrow Fe line by the reverberation mapping method, we compare the observed light curves of Fe K$α$ line with the predicted ones, which are obtained by convolving the continuum light curve with the transfer functions in a thin shell and an inclined disk. The best-fit result is given by the disk case with $i=30^\circ$ which is better than a fit to a constant flux of the Fe K line at the 92.7% level (F-test). We find that the emitting radius obtained from the light curve is 25-37 light days, which is consistent with the radius derived from the Fe K line width. Combining the results of the line width and variation, the most likely site for the origin of the narrow iron lines is 20-40 light days away from the central engine, though other possibilities are not completely ruled out. (abridged)

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2009

Infrared Diagnostics for the Extended 12 micron Sample of Seyferts

We present an analysis of Spitzer IRS spectroscopy of 83 active galaxies from the extended 12 micron sample. We find rank correlations between several tracers of star formation which suggest that (1) the PAH feature is a reliable tracer of star formation, (2) there is a significant contribution to the heating of the cool dust by stars, (3) the H$_2$ emission is also primarily excited by star formation. The 55-90 vs. 20-30 spectral index plot is also a diagnostic of the relative contribution of Starburst to AGN. We see there is a large change in spectral index across the sample. Thus, the contribution to the IR spectrum from the AGN and starburst components can be comparable in magnitude but the relative contribution also varies widely across the sample. We find rank correlations between several AGN tracers. We search for correlations between AGN and Starburst tracers and we conclude that the AGN and Starburst tracers are not correlated. This is consistent with our conclusion that the relative strength of the AGN and Starburst components varies widely across the sample. Thus, there is no simple link between AGN fueling and Black Hole Growth and star formation in these galaxies. The distribution of Sil 10 micron and 18 micron strengths is consistent with the clumpy torus models of Sirocky et al. We find a rank correlation between the [NeV] 14 micron line and the 6.7 micron continuum which may be due to an extended component of hot dust. The Sy 2s with a Hidden Broad Line Region (HBLR) have a higher ratio of AGN to Starburst contribution to the SED than Sy 2s without an HBLR. This may contribute to the detection of the HBLR in polarized light. The Sy 2s with an HBLR are more similar to the Sy 1s than they are to the Sy 2s without an HBLR.

astro-ph.GA↗
arXiv2009

Properties of warm absorbers in active galaxies: a systematic stability curve analysis

Signatures of warm absorbers are seen in soft X-ray spectra of about half of all Seyfert1 galaxies observed and in some quasars and blazars. We use the thermal equilibrium curve to study the influence of the shape of the ionizing continuum, density and the chemical composition of the absorbing gas on the existence and nature of the warm absorbers. We describe circumstances in which a stable warm absorber can exist as a multiphase medium or one with continuous variation in pressure. In particular we find the following results: i) the warm absorber exists only if the spectral index of the X-ray power-law ionizing continuum $α> 0.2$ and has a multiphase nature if $α\sim 0.8$, which interestingly is the spectral index for most of the observed Seyfert 1 galaxies; ii) thermal and ionization states of highly dense warm absorbers are sensitive to their density if the ionizing continuum is sufficiently soft, i.e. dominated by the ultraviolet iii) absorbing gas with super-Solar metallicity is more likely to have a multiphase nature; iv) the nature of the warm absorber is significantly influenced by the absence of iron and associated elements which are produced in the later stages of star formation history in supernovae of type Ia.

astro-ph↗
arXiv2009

Massive Galaxies in COSMOS: Evolution of Black hole versus bulge mass but not versus total stellar mass over the last 9 Gyrs?

We constrain the ratio of black hole (BH) mass to total stellar mass of type-1 AGN in the COSMOS survey at 1<z<2. For 10 AGN at mean redshift z~1.4 with both HST/ACS and HST/NICMOS imaging data we are able to compute total stellar mass M_(*,total), based on restframe UV-to-optical host galaxy colors which constrain mass-to-light ratios. All objects have virial BH mass-estimates available from the COSMOS Magellan/IMACS and zCOSMOS surveys. We find zero difference between the M_BH--M_(*,total)-relation at z~1.4 and the M_BH--M_(*,bulge)-relation in the local Universe. Our interpretation is: (a) If our objects were purely bulge-dominated, the M_BH--M_(*,bulge)-relation has not evolved since z~1.4. However, (b) since we have evidence for substantial disk components, the bulges of massive galaxies (logM_(*,total)=11.1+-0.25 or logM_BH~8.3+-0.2) must have grown over the last 9 Gyrs predominantly by redistribution of disk- into bulge-mass. Since all necessary stellar mass exists in the galaxy at z=1.4, no star-formation or addition of external stellar material is required, only a redistribution e.g. induced by minor and major merging or through disk instabilities. Merging, in addition to redistributing mass in the galaxy, will add both BH and stellar/bulge mass, but does not change the overall final M_BH/M_(*,bulge) ratio. Since the overall cosmic stellar and BH mass buildup trace each other tightly over time, our scenario of bulge-formation in massive galaxies is independent of any strong BH-feedback and means that the mechanism coupling BH and bulge mass until the present is very indirect.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2009

A Vigorous Explorer Program

Explorers have made breakthroughs in many fields of astrophysics. The science from both these missions contributed to three Nobel Prizes - Giacconi (2002), Mather, and Smoot (2006). Explorers have: marked the definitive beginning of precision cosmology, discovered that short gamma-ray bursts are caused by compact star mergers and have measured metalicity to redshifts z>6. NASA Explorers do cutting-edge science that cannot be done by facility-class instruments. The Explorer program provides a rapid response to changing science and technology, to enable cutting-edge science at moderate cost. Explorers also enable innovation, and engage & train scientists, managers and engineers, adding human capital to NASA and the nation. The astrophysics Explorer launch rate now being achieved is 1 per 3 years, and budget projections are in the $150M/year range for the next five years. A newly Vigorous Explorer Program should be created to: 1. Reach the long-stated goal of annual astrophysics launches; 2. Find additional launch options for Explorers and actively encourage cost savings in launchers and spacecraft, such as new commercial vehicles and innovative partnerships. 3. Mitigate risk via stronger technical development and sub-orbital programs, and through longer, more thorough, Phase A programs, potentially reducing the need for a 30% contingency; 4. Strive to protect the funding for missions that have reached Phase B, to prevent significant launch slips and cancellations, with a goal of 4 to 5 years from Phase B to launch; 5. Review the project management procedures and requirements to seek cost reductions, including the risk management strategy and the review and reporting process; 6. Review and possibly modify the cost caps for all Explorer classes to optimize scientific returns per dollar. [ABRIDGED]

astro-ph.IM↗
arXiv2009

The Quasar Mass-Luminosity Plane II: High Mass Turnoff Evolution and a Synchronization Puzzle

We use 62,185 quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR5 sample and standard virial mass scaling laws based on the widths of H beta, Mg II, and C IV lines and adjacent continuum luminosities to explore the maximum mass of quasars as a function of redshift, which we find to be sharp and evolving. This evolution is in the sense that high-mass black holes cease their luminous accretion at higher redshift than lower-mass black holes. Further, turnoff for quasars at any given mass is more highly synchronized than would be expected given the dynamics of their host galaxies. We investigate potential signatures of the quasar turnoff mechanism, including a dearth of high-mass quasars at low Eddington ratio. These new results allow a closer examination of several common assumptions used in modeling quasar accretion and turnoff.

astro-ph.HE↗
arXiv2009

AGN Feedback: Does it work?

While feedback is important in theoretical models, we do not really know if it works in reality. Feedback from jets appears to be sufficient to keep the cooling flows in clusters from cooling too much and it may be sufficient to regulate black hole growth in dominant cluster galaxies. Only about 10% of all quasars, however, have powerful radio jets, so jet-related feedback cannot be generic. The outflows could potentially be a more common form of AGN feedback, but measuring mass and energy outflow rates is a challenging task, the main unknown being the location and geometry of the absorbing medium. Using a novel technique, we made first such measurement in NGC 4051 using XMM data and found the mass and energy outflow rates to be 4 to 5 orders of magnitude below those required for efficient feedback. To test whether the outflow velocity in NGC 4051 is unusually low, we compared the ratio of outflow velocity to escape velocity in a sample of AGNs and found it to be generally less than one. It is thus possible that in most Seyferts the feedback is not sufficient and may not be necessary.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2009

The Nature of Optically Dull Active Galactic Nuclei in COSMOS

We present infrared, optical, and X-ray data of 48 X-ray bright, optically dull AGNs in the COSMOS field. These objects exhibit the X-ray luminosity of an active galactic nucleus (AGN) but lack broad and narrow emission lines in their optical spectrum. We show that despite the lack of optical emission lines, most of these optically dull AGNs are not well-described by a typical passive red galaxy spectrum: instead they exhibit weak but significant blue emission like an unobscured AGN. Photometric observations over several years additionally show significant variability in the blue emission of four optically dull AGNs. The nature of the blue and infrared emission suggest that the optically inactive appearance of these AGNs cannot be caused by obscuration intrinsic to the AGNs. Instead, up to ~70% of optically dull AGNs are diluted by their hosts, with bright or simply edge-on hosts lying preferentially within the spectroscopic aperture. The remaining ~30% of optically dull AGNs have anomalously high f_x/f_o ratios and are intrinsically weak, not obscured, in the optical. These optically dull AGNs are best described as a weakly accreting AGN with a truncated accretion disk from a radiatively inefficient accretion flow.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2009

Quasar Feedback: More Bang for Your Buck

We propose a two-stage model for the effects of feedback from a bright quasar on the cold gas in a galaxy. It is difficult for feedback from near the accretion disk to directly impact dense molecular clouds at ~kpc. But if such feedback can drive a weak wind or outflow in the hot, diffuse ISM (a relatively 'easy' task), then in the wake of such an outflow passing over a cold cloud, a combination of instabilities will drive the cloud material to effectively expand in the direction perpendicular to the outflow. Such expansion dramatically increases the effective cross section of the cloud material and makes it more susceptible to ionization and momentum coupling from absorption of the incident quasar radiation field. Even a moderate effect of this nature can dramatically alter the ability of clouds at large radii to be fully ionized and driven into a secondary outflow by radiation pressure. Since the amount of momentum and volume which can be ionized by observed quasar radiation field is more than sufficient to affect the entire cold gas supply once it has been altered in this manner (and the 'initial' feedback need only initiate a moderate wind in the low-density hot gas), this reduces by an order of magnitude the required energy budget for feedback to affect a host galaxy. Instead of ~5% of the radiated energy (~100% momentum) needed if the initial feedback must directly heat or blow out the galactic gas, if only ~0.5% of the luminosity (~10% momentum) can couple to drive the initial hot outflow, this mechanism could be efficient. This amounts to hot gas outflow rates from near the accretion disk of only 5-10% of the BH accretion rate.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2009

Observational Limits on Type 1 AGN Accretion Rate in COSMOS

We present black hole masses and accretion rates for 182 Type 1 AGN in COSMOS. We estimate masses using the scaling relations for the broad Hb, MgII, and CIV emission lines in the redshift ranges 0.16<z<0.88, 1<z<2.4, and 2.7<z<4.9. We estimate the accretion rate using an Eddington ratio L_I/L_Edd estimated from optical and X-ray data. We find that very few Type 1 AGN accrete below L_I/L_Edd ~ 0.01, despite simulations of synthetic spectra which show that the survey is sensitive to such Type 1 AGN. At lower accretion rates the BLR may become obscured, diluted or nonexistent. We find evidence that Type 1 AGN at higher accretion rates have higher optical luminosities, as more of their emission comes from the cool (optical) accretion disk with respect to shorter wavelengths. We measure a larger range in accretion rate than previous works, suggesting that COSMOS is more efficient at finding low accretion rate Type 1 AGN. However the measured range in accretion rate is still comparable to the intrinsic scatter from the scaling relations, suggesting that Type 1 AGN accrete at a narrow range of Eddington ratio, with L_I/L_Edd ~ 0.1.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2009

Active Galactic Nuclei and their role in Galaxy Formation and Evolution

There are several key open questions as to the nature and origin of AGN including: 1) what initiates the active phase, 2) the duration of the active phase, and 3) the effect of the AGN on the host galaxy. Critical new insights to these can be achieved by probing the central regions of AGN with sub-mas angular resolution at UV/optical wavelengths. In particular, such observations would enable us to constrain the energetics of the AGN "feedback" mechanism, which is critical for understanding the role of AGN in galaxy formation and evolution. These observations can only be obtained by long-baseline interferometers or sparse aperture telescopes in space, since the aperture diameters required are in excess of 500 m - a regime in which monolithic or segmented designs are not and will not be feasible and because these observations require the detection of faint emission near the bright unresolved continuum source, which is impossible from the ground, even with adaptive optics. Two mission concepts which could provide these invaluable observations are NASA's Stellar Imager (SI; Carpenter et al. 2008 & http://hires.gsfc.nasa.gov/si/) interferometer and ESA's Luciola (Labeyrie 2008) sparse aperture hypertelescope.

astro-ph.IM↗
arXiv2009

The Chandra COSMOS Survey, I: Overview and Point Source Catalog

The Chandra COSMOS Survey (C-COSMOS) is a large, 1.8 Ms, Chandra} program that has imaged the central 0.5 sq.deg of the COSMOS field (centered at 10h, +02deg) with an effective exposure of ~160ksec, and an outer 0.4sq.deg. area with an effective exposure of ~80ksec. The limiting source detection depths are 1.9e-16 erg cm(-2) s(-1) in the Soft (0.5-2 keV) band, 7.3e(-16) erg cm^-2 s^-1 in the Hard (2-10 keV) band, and 5.7e(-16) erg cm(-2) s(-1) in the Full (0.5-10 keV) band. Here we describe the strategy, design and execution of the C-COSMOS survey, and present the catalog of 1761 point sources detected at a probability of being spurious of <2e(-5) (1655 in the Full, 1340 in the Soft, and 1017 in the Hard bands). By using a grid of 36 heavily (~50%) overlapping pointing positions with the ACIS-I imager, a remarkably uniform (to 12%) exposure across the inner 0.5 sq.deg field was obtained, leading to a sharply defined lower flux limit. The widely different PSFs obtained in each exposure at each point in the field required a novel source detection method, because of the overlapping tiling strategy, which is described in a companion paper. (Puccetti et al. Paper II). This method produced reliable sources down to a 7-12 counts, as verified by the resulting logN-logS curve, with sub-arcsecond positions, enabling optical and infrared identifications of virtually all sources, as reported in a second companion paper (Civano et al. Paper III). The full catalog is described here in detail, and is available on-line.

astro-ph.CO↗
arXiv2009

Understanding the Astrophysics of Galaxy Evolution: the role of spectroscopic surveys in the next decade

Over the last decade optical spectroscopic surveys have characterized the low redshift galaxy population and uncovered populations of star-forming galaxies back to z ~ 7. This work has shown that the primary epoch of galaxy building and black hole growth occurs at redshifts of 2 to 3. The establishment of the concordance LCDM cosmology shifted the focus of galaxy population studies from constraining cosmological parameters to characterizing the processes which regulate the formation and evolution of galaxies.In the next decade, high redshift observers will attempt to formulate a coherent evolutionary picture connecting galaxies in the high redshift Universe to galaxies today. In order to link galaxy populations at different redshifts, we must not only characterize their evolution in a systematic way, we must establish which physical processes are responsible for it. Considerable progress has already been made in understanding how galaxies evolved from z ~ 1 to the present day. Large spectroscopic surveys in the near infrared are required to push these studies back towards the main epoch of galaxy building. Only then will we understand the full story of the formation of L* galaxies like our own Milky Way. A large near-IR spectroscopic survey will also provide the calibration needed to avoid systematics in the large photometric programs proposed to study the nature of dark matter and dark energy. We provide an outline design for a multi-object 0.4 to 1.8 micron spectrograph, which could be placed on an existing telescope, and which would allow a full characterization of the galaxy population out to z ~ 2. We strongly recommend a serious further study to design a real instrument, which will be required for galaxy formation studies to advance to the next frontier.

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