On the cosmic evolution of the scaling relations between black holes and their host galaxies: Broad Line AGN in the zCOSMOS survey

TL;DR

This study investigates how the relationship between black hole mass and host galaxy properties evolves over cosmic time, revealing a positive evolution with redshift and suggesting faster black hole growth in the early universe.

Contribution

It provides the first measurement of black hole and host galaxy properties for broad line AGN at 1<z<2.2, demonstrating evolution in the black hole-host galaxy mass ratio.

Findings

Black hole to host galaxy mass ratio increases with redshift.

Evolution of the MBH-M* relation suggests faster black hole growth at high redshift.

Observational biases do not fully account for the observed evolution.

Abstract

(Abriged) We report on the measurement of the rest frame K-band luminosity and total stellar mass of the hosts of 89 broad line Active Galactic Nuclei detected in the zCOSMOS survey in the redshift range 1<z<2.2. The unprecedented multiwavelength coverage of the survey field allows us to disentangle the emission of the host galaxy from that of the nuclear black hole in their Spectral Energy Distributions. We derive an estimate of black hole masses through the analysis of the broad Mg II emission lines observed in the medium-resolution spectra taken with VIMOS/VLT as part of the zCOSMOS project. We found that, as compared to the local value, the average black hole to host galaxy mass ratio appears to evolve positively with redshift, with a best fit evolution of the form (1+z)^{0.68 \pm0.12 +0.6 -0.3}, where the large asymmetric systematic errors stem from the uncertainties in the choice of IMF, in the calibration of the virial relation used to estimate BH masses and in the mean QSO SED adopted. A thorough analysis of observational biases induced by intrinsic scatter in the scaling relations reinforces the conclusion that an evolution of the MBH-M* relation must ensue for actively growing black holes at early times: either its overall normalization, or its intrinsic scatter (or both) appear to increase with redshift. This can be interpreted as signature of either a more rapid growth of supermassive black holes at high redshift, a change of structural properties of AGN hosts at earlier times, or a significant mismatch between the typical growth times of nuclear black holes and host galaxies.