The Fundamental Planes of Black Hole Activity for Radio-Loud and Radio-Quiet Quasars

TL;DR

This study investigates the fundamental plane of black hole activity in quasars, revealing a dichotomy between radio-loud and radio-quiet types, with implications for their emission mechanisms and a new method for estimating black hole masses.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive analysis of the fundamental plane across a wide redshift range for both radio-loud and radio-quiet quasars, highlighting their distinct accretion and emission properties.

Findings

Radio-quiet quasars are consistent with advection-dominated accretion.

Radio-loud quasars show a combination of jet and disc emission.

The fundamental plane varies with redshift for radio-loud quasars.

Abstract

We examine the fundamental plane of black hole activity for correlations with redshift and radio loudness in both radio-loud and radio-quiet quasar populations. Sources are compiled from archival data of both radio-loud and radio-quiet quasars over redshifts $0.1 < z < 5.0$ to produce a sample of 353 sources with known X-ray, radio, and black hole mass measurements. A fundamental plane of accretion activity is fit to a sample of radio-loud and radio-quiet quasars, and we find a dichotomy between radio-loud and radio-quiet sources. The set of best-fit equations that best describe the two samples are $\log{L_{R}} = (1.12 \pm 0.06) \log{L_{X}} - (0.20 \pm 0.07) \log{M} -(5.64 \pm 2.99)$ for our radio-loud sample and $\log{L_{R}} = (0.48 \pm 0.06) \log{L_{X}} + (0.50 \pm 0.08) \log{M} + (15.26 \pm 2.66)$ for our radio-quiet sample. Our results suggest that the average radio-quiet quasar emission is consistent with advection dominated accretion, while a combination of jet and disc emission dominates in radio-loud quasars. We additionally examine redshift trends amongst the radio-loud and radio-quiet samples, and we observe a redshift dependence for the fundamental plane of radio-loud quasars. Lastly, we utilize the fundamental plane as a black hole mass estimation method and determine it useful in studying systems where standard spectral modeling techniques are not viable.