Clustering, Cosmology and a New Era of Black Hole Demographics -- II. The Conditional Luminosity Functions of Type 2 and Type 1 Active Galactic Nuclei

TL;DR

This paper develops a method to compute the Conditional Luminosity Functions of Type 1 and Type 2 AGNs, revealing no significant difference in their host halo masses at different redshifts, challenging simple unification models.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel CLF-based approach to compare host halo properties of different AGN types across redshifts, providing new insights into AGN evolution.

Findings

No significant difference in mean halo mass between Type 1 and Type 2 AGNs.

Marginal evidence suggests Type 1 AGNs may have larger halo masses.

The CLF technique enables detailed study of AGN subsets in future surveys.

Abstract

The orientation-based unification model of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) posits that the principle difference between obscured (Type 2) and unobscured (Type 1) AGNs is the line-of-sight into the central engine. If this model is correct than there should be no difference in many of the properties of AGN host galaxies (e.g., the mass of the surrounding dark matter haloes). However, recent clustering analyses of Type 1 and Type 2 AGNs have provided some evidence for a difference in the halo mass, in conflict with the orientation-based unified model. In this work, a method to compute the Conditional Luminosity Function (CLF) of Type 2 and Type 1 AGNs is presented. The CLF allows many fundamental halo properties to be computed as a function of AGN luminosity, which we apply to the question of the host halo masses of Type 1 and 2 AGNs. By making use of the total AGN CLF, the Type 1 X-ray luminosity function, and the luminosity-dependent Type 2 AGN fraction, the CLFs of Type 1 and 2 AGNs are calculated at $z\approx 0$ and $0.9$. At both $z$, there is no statistically significant difference in the mean halo mass of Type 2 and 1 AGNs at any luminosity. There is marginal evidence that Type 1 AGNs may have larger halo masses than Type 2s, which would be consistent with an evolutionary picture where quasars are initially obscured and then subsequently reveal themselves as Type 1s. As the Type 1 lifetime is longer, the host halo will increase somewhat in mass during the Type 1 phase. The CLF technique will be a powerful way to study the properties of many AGNs subsets (e.g., radio-loud, Compton-thick) as future wide-area X-ray and optical surveys substantially increase our ability to place AGNs in their cosmological context.