1. Constraints on the Duty Cycles of Quasars at z ∼ 6.
- Author
-
Huanqing Chen and Nickolay Y. Gnedin
- Subjects
- *
QUASARS , *DARK matter , *HALOS (Meteorology) , *COLD gases , *ASTRONOMICAL observations - Abstract
We study the mass of quasar-hosting dark matter halos at z ∼ 6 and further constrain the fraction of dark matter halos hosting active quasars fon and the quasar opening angle imax using observations of C ii lines in the literature. We make assumptions that (1) on average more massive halos host quasars with higher peak brightness, (2) cold gas in galaxies has rotational velocity Vcirc = αVmax, where Vmax is the maximum circular velocity of dark matter particles obtained from DM-only simulation and α ∼ 1 is a free parameter, (3) a fraction fon of the halos host active quasars with a certain opening angle imax, and that (4) quasars point randomly on the sky. We find that for a choice of specific α ≳ 1, the most likely solution has fon < 0.01, corresponding to a small duty cycle of quasar activity. We also apply a bounded flat prior on α and marginalize over it, and we find the most likely fon shift to 1 as the upper-boundary of α decreases below 1. Overall, our constraints are highly sensitive to α and hence inconclusive. Stronger constraints on fon can be made if we better understand the dynamics of cold gas in these galaxies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2018
- Full Text
- View/download PDF