Finding quasars

Although the first quasars known were discovered as radio sources, it was quickly realized that quasars could be found more efficiently by looking for objects bluer than normal stars. This can be done with relatively high efficiency by photographing large areas of the sky through two or three different-coloured filters. The photographs are then compared to locate the unusually blue objects, whose nature is verified through subsequent spectroscopy. This remains the primary technique for finding quasars, although it has evolved over the years with the replacement of film by electronic charge-coupled devices (CCDs), the extension of the surveys to longer wavelengths in the infrared, and the addition of multiple filters that, in various combinations, are effective at isolating quasars at different redshifts. Quasars have also been discovered through other techniques, including searches for starlike sources whose brightness varies irregularly and X-ray surveys from space; indeed, a high level of X-ray emission is regarded by astronomers as a sure indicator of an accreting black-hole system.

Physical structure of quasars

Quasars and other AGNs are apparently powered by gravitational accretion onto supermassive black holes, where “supermassive” means from roughly a million to a few billion times the mass of the Sun. Supermassive black holes reside at the centres of many large galaxies. In about 5–10 percent of these galaxies, gas tumbles into the deep gravitational well of the black hole and is heated to incandescence as the gas particles pick up speed and pile up in a rapidly rotating “accretion disk” close to the horizon of the black hole. There is a maximum rate set by the Eddington limit at which a black hole can accrete matter before the heating of the infalling gas results in so much outward pressure from radiation that the accretion stops. What distinguishes an “active” galactic nucleus from other galactic nuclei (the 90–95 percent of large galaxies that are currently not quasars) is that the black hole in an active nucleus accretes a few solar masses of matter per year, which, if it is accreting at around 1 percent or more of the Eddington rate, is sufficient to account for a typical quasar with a total luminosity of about 10³⁹ watts. (The Sun’s luminosity is about 4 × 10²⁶ watts.)

In addition to black holes and accretion disks, quasars have other remarkable features. Just beyond the accretion disk are clouds of gas that move at high velocities around the inner structure, absorbing high-energy radiation from the accretion disk and reprocessing it into the broad emission lines of hydrogen and ions of other atoms that are the signatures of quasar spectra. Farther from the black hole but still largely in the accretion disk plane are dust-laden gas clouds that can obscure the quasar itself. Some quasars are also observed to have radio jets, which are highly collimated beams of plasma propelled out along the rotation axis of the accretion disk at speeds often approaching that of light. These jets emit beams of radiation that can be observed at X-ray and radio wavelengths (and less often at optical wavelengths).

Because of this complex structure, the appearance of a quasar depends on the orientation of the rotation axis of the accretion disk relative to the observer’s line of sight. Depending on this angle, different quasar components—the accretion disk, emission-line clouds, jets—appear to be more or less prominent. This results in a wide variety of observed phenomena from what are, in reality, physically similar sources.

Evolution of quasars

The number density of quasars increases dramatically with redshift, which translates through Hubble’s law to more quasars at larger distances. Because of the finite speed of light, when quasars are observed at great distances, they are observed as they were in the distant past. Thus, the increasing density of quasars with distance means that they were more common in the past than they are now. This trend increases until “look-back times” that correspond to around three billion years after the big bang, which occurred approximately 13.5 billion years ago. At earlier ages, the number density of quasars decreases sharply, corresponding to an era when the quasar population was still building up. The most distant, and thus earliest, quasars known were formed less than a billion years after the big bang.

Individual quasars appear as their central black holes begin to accrete gas at a high rate, possibly triggered by a merger with another galaxy, building up the mass of the central black hole. The current best estimate is that quasar activity is episodic, with individual episodes lasting around a million years and the total quasar lifetime lasting around 10 million years. At some point, quasar activity ceases completely, leaving behind the dormant massive black holes found in most massive galaxies. This “life cycle” appears to proceed most rapidly with the most-massive black holes, which become dormant earlier than less-massive black holes. Indeed, in the current universe the remaining AGN population is made up predominantly of lower-luminosity Seyfert galaxies with relatively small supermassive black holes.

In the present-day universe there is a close relationship between the mass of a black hole and the mass of its host galaxy. This is quite remarkable, since the central black hole accounts for only about 0.1 percent of the mass of the galaxy. It is believed that the intense radiation, mass outflows, and jets from the black hole during its active quasar phase are responsible. The radiation, outflows, and jets heat up and can even remove entirely the interstellar medium from the host galaxy. This loss of gas in the galaxy simultaneously shuts down star formation and chokes off the quasar’s fuel supply, thus freezing both the mass in stars and the mass of the black hole.