Redshift Evolution of the Ratio of Supermassive Black Hole Mass to Stellar Mass
Abstract
We run and analyze a suite of high-redshift zoom-in cosmological simulations with varying supernova feedback and supermassive black hole (SMBH) accretion prescriptions to study the joint evolution of stellar and SMBH mass in high-redshift galaxies down to . The simulations reproduce the observed high- relation if super-Eddington accretion is allowed prior to the final self-regulated phase. To extend the evolution to lower redshift, we model subsequent black hole and host growth using analytic halo assembly histories combined with a redshift-dependent effective Eddington duty cycle, , calibrated to observations at , with conservative uncertainties at higher redshift. Within this framework, exhibits a broad peak at --10, reaching a few percent up to , followed by a steady, approximately power-law decline toward . The model predicts at , consistent with available observations. This evolution is driven by rapid SMBH growth at high redshift, with effective mass e-folding times shorter than those of stellar mass, while at later times galaxy growth dominates, leading to the decline in . These results demonstrate that the emergence of a high-redshift peak and subsequent decline is robust despite uncertainties in the duty-cycle normalization.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2605.04776,
title = {Redshift Evolution of the Ratio of Supermassive Black Hole Mass to Stellar Mass},
author = {Ziyong Wu and Renyue Cen and Romain Teyssier},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.04776},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
16 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal