Published in

Oxford University Press (OUP), Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 4(407), p. 2393-2398

DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.17067.x

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Quasar Radio-Loudness and the Elliptical Core Problem

Journal article published in 2010 by Timothy S. Hamilton ORCID
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

The dichotomy between radio-loud and radio-quiet QSOs is not simply one of host morphology. While spiral galaxies almost exclusively host radio-quiet QSOs, ellipticals can host either radio-louds or radio-quiets. We find that a combination of accretion rate and host scale determines which type of QSO a given elliptical galaxy will host. QSOs with high x-ray luminosities (above 10^44.5 erg/s at 0.5 keV) are mostly radio-loud. But those with low luminosities divide fairly neatly in size (measured by the half-light radius, r_e). Those larger than about 10 kpc are radio-loud, while smaller ones are radio-quiet. It has recently been found that core and coreless ellipticals are also divided near this limit. This implies that for low-luminosity QSOs, radio-louds are found in core ellipticals, while radio-quiets are in coreless ellipticals and spirals. This segregation also shows up strongly for low-redshift objects, and in general, there is a loss over time of coreless, radio-loud QSOs. Since the presence or absence of a core may be tied to the galactic merger history, we have an evolutionary explanation for the differences between radio-loud and radio-quiet QSOs. ; Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures. To be published in MNRAS