REVIEW 6 cited by
QSO Lifetimes
Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.
This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.
SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event
T0 review · schema-true
One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.
pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp
read the original abstract
The QSO lifetime t_Q is one of the most fundamental quantities for understanding black hole and QSO evolution, yet it remains uncertain by several orders of magnitude. If t_Q is long, then only a small fraction of galaxies went through a luminous QSO phase. In contrast, a short lifetime would require most galaxies today to have undergone a QSO phase in their youth. The current best estimates or constraints on t_Q from black hole demographics and the radiative properties of QSOs vary from at least 10^6 to 10^8 years. This broad range still allows both possibilities: that QSOs were either a rare or a common stage of galaxy evolution. These constraints also do not rule out the possibility that QSO activity is episodic, with individual active periods much shorter than the total active lifetime. In the next few years a variety of additional observational constraints on the lifetimes of QSOs will become available, including clustering measurements and the proximity effect. These new constraints can potentially determine t_Q to within a factor of 3 and therefore answer one of the most fundamental questions in black hole evolution: Do they shine as they grow? This precision will also test the viability of our current model for accretion physics, specifically the radiative efficiency and need for super-Eddington luminosities to explain the black hole population.
Forward citations
Cited by 6 Pith papers
-
SDSS-V: Revealing a weak accretion state in X-ray selected red quasars
Red quasars are intrinsically X-ray weak with low alpha_OX values, tracing a distinct evolutionary stage of suppressed black hole accretion relative to stellar mass growth.
-
Binary disruptions driven by massive disks around massive black holes
Disk torques can drive stellar binaries around a massive black hole to tidal disruption, and the Milky Way's young stellar disk likely caused ~10^2 such events ~5 Myr ago.
-
Characterizing the roles of transitory obscured phases and inner torus in shaping the fractions of obscured AGN at cosmic noon
Pure evolutionary AGN light curves can only reproduce cosmic-noon obscured fractions if the visible phase is tuned by luminosity or if a long-lived torus is added; starbursts and mergers alone cannot.
-
Identifying Compact Chirping SMBHBs in LSST using Bayesian Analysis
A Bayesian 'frequency comb' sampler can recover the chirping periodicity of compact supermassive black hole binaries from simulated 10-year LSST lightcurves with 3-5 sigma confidence for amplitudes as low as 0.1 mag.
-
Quasar Negative Feedback to Surrounding Galaxies Probed with Ly$\alpha$ Emitters and Continuum-Selected Galaxies
Within the quasar proximity region at z~2.2, Ly-alpha emitters are about 5 sigma less dense than continuum-selected galaxies, implying quasar photoevaporation suppresses low-mass galaxy formation.
-
Can quasars, triggered by mergers, account for NANOGrav's stochastic gravitational wave background?
Using the observed quasar luminosity function, the authors show that quasar-associated black hole mergers can reproduce the NANOGrav gravitational wave background if quasar lifetimes are near 3e7 years and most quasar...
Discussion (0). Continue with ORCID to comment.