Image of Alice in Wonderland at the Mad Hatter's tea party You are cordially invited to afternoon tea and biscuits wine and chocolate

Astronomy Tea Talks at Caltech

Mondays, Hameetman auditorium (Cahill)
Tea:  4.00pm
Talk: 4.15pm

Organized by:

2010 - 2011 season:
22 November 2010 Brandon Kelly (Harvard CfA)

'Constraints on Black Hole Growth, Quasar Lifetimes, and Eddington Ratio Distributions from the SDSS Broad Line Quasar Black Hole Mass Function'


I will present an estimate of the black hole mass function (BHMF) of
broad line quasars (BLQSOs), and the distribution of their Eddington
ratios, using a method that self-consistently corrects for
incompleteness and the statistical uncertainty in the mass estimates,
based on a sample of 9886 quasars at 1 < z < 4.5 drawn from the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey DR3. I will also discuss the constraints that our
estimated mass function enables us to place on the estimated lifetime
of the broad line quasar phase, present an estimate for the mass of the
most massive black hole implied by our mass function, and discuss our
results within the context of self-regulated black hole growth models.
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Last modified on 20th Jul 2011 by Dominik A. Riechers.  

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