On the small-scale clustering of quasars: constraints from the MassiveBlack II simulation

作者：Aklant K. Bhowmick, Tiziana DiMatteo, Sarah Eftekharzadeh, Adam D. Myers · 发表于：Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society · 年份：2019 · DOI：10.1093/mnras/stz519 · 被引用次数：14 · 研究领域：Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena、Astronomy and Astrophysical Research、Cosmology and Gravitation Theories

Abstract We examine recent high-precision measurements of small-scale quasar clustering (at z ∼ 0.5–2 on scales of ${\sim }25~\mathrm{kpc}\, h^{-1}$) from the SDSS in the context of the MassiveBlack II (MBII) cosmological hydrodynamic simulation and conditional luminosity function (CLF) modelling. At these high luminosities (g < 20.85 quasars), the MBII simulation volume ($100~\mathrm{cMpc}\, h^{-1}$ comoving boxsize) has only three quasar pairs at distances of 1–4 Mpc. The black hole masses for the pairs range between $M_{\rm bh}\sim 1{\, \rm and\, }3\times 10^{9}~\mathrm{M}_{\odot }\, h^{-1}$ and the quasar hosts are haloes of $M_{\rm h}\sim 1\hbox{--}3\times 10^{14}~\mathrm{M}_{\odot }\, h^{-1}$. Such pairs show signs of recent major mergers in the MBII simulation. By modelling the central and satellite AGN CLFs as lognormal and Schechter distributions, respectively (as seen in MBII AGNs), we arrive at CLF models which fit the simulation predictions and observed luminosity function and the small-scale clustering measured for the SDSS sample. The small-scale clustering of our mock quasars is well-explained by central--satellite quasar pairs that reside in $M_{\rm h}\gt 10^{14}~\mathrm{M}_{\odot }\, h^{-1}$ dark matter haloes. For these pairs, satellite quasar luminosity is similar to that of central quasars. Our CLF models imply a relatively steep increase in the maximum satellite luminosity, $L^*_{\mathrm{sat}}$, in haloes of $M_{\rm h}\gt 10^{14}~\mathrm{M}_{\odot ...