What does the quasar luminosity function tell us about supermassive black hole evolution?

Abstract

In the local Universe, the masses of supermassive black holes (SMBH) appear to correlate with the physical properties of their hosts, including the mass of the dark matter halo. Using these clues as a starting point many studies have produced models that can explain phenomena like the quasar luminosity function. The shortcoming of this approach is that working models are not unique, and as a result it is not always clear what input physics is being constrained. Here we take a different approach. We identify critical parameters that describe the evolution of SMBHs at high redshift, and constrain their parameter space based on observations of high-redshift quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Su..