The co-evolution of supermassive black holes and galaxies in luminous AGN over a wide range of redshift

Abstract

It is well known that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and their host galaxies co-evolve. A manifestation of this co-evolution is the correlation that has been found between the SMBH mass, MBH, and the galaxy bulge or stellar mass, M*. The cosmic evolution of this relation, though, is still a matter of debate. In this work, we examine the MBH − M* relation, using 687 X-ray luminous (median log [LX,2−10 keV(erg s−1)] = 44.3), broad-line active galactic nuclei (AGN), at 0.2 <  z <  4.0 (median z ≈ 1.4) that lie in the XMM-XXL field. Their MBH and M* range from 7.5 <  log [MBH (M⊙)] <  9.5 and 10 <  log [M*(M⊙)] <  12, respectively. Most of the AGN live in star-forming galaxies and their Eddington ratios range from 0.01 to 1, with a median value of 0.06. Our results show that MBH and M* are correlated (r = 0.47 ± 0.21, averaged over different redshift intervals). Our analysis also shows that the mean ratio of the MBH and M* does not evolve with redshift, at least up to z = 2 and has a value of log(MBH/M*)= − 2.44. The majority of the AGN (75%) are in a SMBH mass growth-dominant phase. In these systems, the MBH − M* correlation is weaker and their M* tends to be lower (for the same MBH) compared to systems that are in a galaxy mass growth phase. Our findings suggest that the growth of black hole mass occurs first, while the early stellar mass assembly may not be so efficient.