{"paper":{"title":"Do the Most Massive Black Holes at $z=2$ Grow via Major Mergers?","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"astro-ph.GA","authors_text":"A. M. Koekemoer, A. Schulze, A. van der Wel, C. Villforth, J. D. Silverman, K. Jahnke, L. Wisotzki, M. Cisternas, M. Mechtley, M. Schramm, R. Andrae, R. A. Windhorst, S. H. Cohen, T. Hewlett","submitted_at":"2015-10-28T20:08:38Z","abstract_excerpt":"The most frequently proposed model for the origin of quasars holds that the high accretion rates seen in luminous active galactic nuclei are primarily triggered during major mergers between gas-rich galaxies. While plausible for decades, this model has only begun to be tested with statistical rigor in the past few years. Here we report on a Hubble Space Telescope study to test this hypothesis for $z=2$ quasars with high super-massive black hole masses ($M_\\mathrm{BH}=10^9-10^{10}~M_\\odot{}$), which dominate cosmic black hole growth at this redshift. We compare Wide Field Camera 3 $F160W$ (rest"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"1510.08461","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}