English

Constraints On Duty Cycles Of Quasars At Z $\sim$ 6

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2018-12-05 v1

Abstract

We study the mass of quasar-hosting dark matter halos at z \sim 6 and further constrain the fraction of dark matter halos hosting an active quasar fonf_{on} and the quasar beaming angle imaxi_{\rm max} using observations of CII lines in the literature. We make assumptions that (1) more massive halos host brighter quasars, (2) a fraction of the halos host active quasars with a certain beaming angle, (3) cold gas in galaxies has rotational velocity Vcirc=αVmaxV_{\rm circ}=\alpha V_{\rm max}, and that (4) quasars point randomly on the sky. We find that for a choice of specific α1\alpha \gtrsim 1, the most likely solution has fon<0.01f_{\rm on} < 0.01, corresponding to a small duty cycle of quasar activity. However, if we marginalize over α\alpha, for some choices of a prior a second solution with fon=1f_{\rm on}=1 appears. Overall, our the constraints are highly sensitive to α\alpha and hence inconclusive. Stronger constraints on fonf_{\rm on} can be made if we better understand the dynamics of cold gas in these galaxies.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1809.01545,
  title  = {Constraints On Duty Cycles Of Quasars At Z $\sim$ 6},
  author = {Huanqing Chen and Nickolay Y. Gnedin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1809.01545},
  year   = {2018}
}