The Diverse Morphology, Stellar Population, and Black Hole Scaling Relations of the Host Galaxies of Nearby Quasars

TL;DR

This study uses Hubble imaging to analyze the morphology, stellar populations, and black hole relations of 35 low-redshift quasar host galaxies, revealing diverse structures and scaling behaviors.

Contribution

It provides detailed morphological and stellar property measurements of quasar hosts, highlighting the prevalence of pseudo bulges and the relation to black hole mass.

Findings

Half of the hosts are disk galaxies with pseudo bulges.

Most luminous quasar hosts are ellipticals with large stellar masses.

Black hole mass correlates with host galaxy stellar mass, with different behaviors for high and low mass black holes.

Abstract

We present rest-frame $B$ and $I$ imaging of 35 low-redshift ($z < 0.5$) Palomar-Green quasars using the Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3. We perform multi-component two-dimensional image decomposition to separate the host galaxy from its bright active nucleus, characterize its morphology, and measure its photometric properties. Special care is devoted to quantifying the structural parameters of the galaxy bulge, determine its $B-I$ color, and estimate its stellar mass. Roughly half of the sample, comprising the less luminous ($L_{5100} \lesssim 10^{45}\,\mathrm{erg\,s^{-1}}$) but most high Eddington ratio quasars, reside in disk galaxies that are often barred and possess pseudo bulges. The large stellar masses, large effective radii, and faint surface brightnesses suggest that the host galaxies of the most luminous quasars are mostly ellipticals. Major mergers constitute only a minority ($\lesssim 20\%$) of our sample. Our quasar sample roughly obeys the scaling relations between black hole mass and host galaxy (bulge, core, total) stellar mass. Hosts with black holes more massive than $\sim 10^8\,M_\odot$ behave similarly to classical bulges and early-type galaxies, while those with less massive black holes, particular the narrow-line Seyfert 1s, are consistent with pseudo bulges in late-type galaxies. The host galaxy bulges, irrespective of whether they are classical or pseudo, follow the relatively tight inverse relation between effective radius and mean effective surface brightness of inactive classical bulges and ellipticals. We argue that pseudo bulges experience recent or ongoing nuclear star formation.