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

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. 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.

The SAO REU program is funded in part by the National Science Foundation REU and Department of Defense ASSURE programs under NSF Grant no. AST 1852268 and 2050813, and by the Smithsonian Institution.