Black Hole Masses of High-Redshift Quasars
Astrophysics
2017-08-23 v1
Abstract
Black-hole masses of distant quasars cannot be measured directly, but can be estimated to within a factor 3 to 5 using scaling relationships involving the quasar luminosity and broad-line width. Why such relationships are reasonable is summarized. The results of applying scaling relationships to data of quasars at a range of redshifts (z <= 6.3) are presented. Luminous quasars typically have masses of order 1 billion solar masses even at the highest redshifts. The fact that such massive black holes appear as early as at z ~ 6 indicate that black holes form very early or build up mass very fast.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0407325,
title = {Black Hole Masses of High-Redshift Quasars},
author = {M. Vestergaard},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0407325},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
4 pages with 2 figures, to appear in proceedings of Multiwavelength AGN Surveys, ed. R. Mujica and R. Maiolino (Singapore: World Scientific), 2004