Black Hole and Galaxy Coevolution from Continuity Equation and Abundance Matching

TL;DR

This paper uses a statistical approach combining the continuity equation and abundance matching to study the coevolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes, reproducing observed properties and revealing in-situ growth dominance.

Contribution

It presents analytical solutions for the black hole mass function from AGN luminosity functions and introduces an improved abundance matching method linking stellar, black hole, and dark matter components.

Findings

Reproduces local black hole mass function and AGN duty cycle.

Shows in-situ processes dominate star and black hole buildup.

Clustering properties match observations, validating the approach.

Abstract

[abridged] We investigate the coevolution of galaxies and hosted supermassive black holes throughout the history of the Universe by a statistical approach based on the continuity equation and the abundance matching technique. Specifically, we present analytical solutions of the continuity equation without source term to reconstruct the supermassive black hole (BH) mass function from the AGN luminosity functions. Such an approach includes physically-motivated AGN lightcurves tested on independent datasets, which describe the evolution of the Eddington ratio and radiative efficiency from slim- to thin-disc conditions. We nicely reproduce the local estimates of the BH mass function, the AGN duty cycle as a function of mass and redshift, along with the Eddington ratio function and the fraction of galaxies with given stellar mass hosting an AGN with given Eddington ratio. We exploit the same approach to reconstruct the observed stellar mass function at different redshift from the UV and far-IR luminosity functions associated to star formation in galaxies. These results imply that the buildup of stars and BHs in galaxies occurs via in-situ processes, with dry mergers playing a marginal role at least for stellar masses < 3 10^11 M_sun and BH masses < 10^9 M_sun, where the statistical data are more secure and less biased by systematic errors. In addition, we develop an improved abundance matching technique to link the stellar and BH content of galaxies to the gravitationally dominant dark matter component. The resulting relationships constitute a testbed for galaxy evolution models, highlighting the complementary role of stellar and AGN feedback in the star formation process. Finally, the clustering properties of BHs and galaxies are found to be in full agreement with current observations, so further validating our results from the continuity equation.