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We study the relation between obscuration and supermassive black hole (SMBH) accretion using a large sample of hard X-ray selected active galactic nuclei (AGNs). We find a strong decrease in the fraction of obscured sources above the Eddington limit for dusty gas (log lambda(Edd) >= -2) confirming earlier results, and consistent with the radiation-regulated unification model. This also explains the difference in the Eddington ratio distribution functions (ERDFs) of type 1 and type 2 AGNs obtained by a recent study. The break in the ERDF of nearby AGNs is at log lambda*(Edd) = -1.34 +/- 0.07. This corresponds to the lambda(Edd) where AGNs transition from having most of their sky covered by obscuring material to being mostly devoid of absorbing material. A similar trend is observed for the luminosity function, which implies that most of the SMBH growth in the local universe happens when the AGN is covered by a large reservoir of gas and dust. These results could be explained with a radiation-regulated growth model, in which AGNs move in the N-H-lambda(Edd) plane during their life cycle. The growth episode starts with the AGN mostly unobscured and accreting at low lambda(Edd). As the SMBH is further fueled, lambda(Edd), N-H and the covering factor increase, leading the AGN to be preferentially observed as obscured. Once lambda(Edd) reaches the Eddington limit for dusty gas, the covering factor and N-H rapidly decrease, leading the AGN to be typically observed as unobscured. As the remaining fuel is depleted, the SMBH goes back into a quiescent phase., The Astrophysical Journal, 938 (1), ISSN:0004-637X, ISSN:2041-8213

Ionised gas kinematics provide crucial evidence of the impact that active galactic nuclei (AGN) have in regulating star formation in their host galaxies. Although the presence of outflows in AGN host galaxies has been firmly established, the calculation of outflow properties such as mass outflow rates and kinetic energy remains challenging. We present the [OIII]5007 ionised gas outflow properties of 22 z$, Comment: Main paper: 20 pages, 15 figures, 3 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

Context. Precise measurements of black hole masses are essential to understanding the coevolution of these sources and their host galaxies. Aims. We develop a novel approach for computing black hole virial masses using measurements of continuum luminosities and emission line widths from partially overlapping, narrow-band observations of quasars; we refer to this technique as single-epoch photometry. Methods. This novel method relies on forward-modelling quasar observations for estimating emission line widths, which enables unbiased measurements even for lines coarsely resolved by narrow-band data. We assess the performance of this technique using quasars from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) observed by the miniJPAS survey, a proof-of-concept project of the Javalambre Physics of the Accelerating Universe Astrophysical Survey (J-PAS) collaboration covering ≃1 deg2 of the northern sky using the 56 J-PAS narrow-band filters. Results. We find remarkable agreement between black hole masses from single-epoch SDSS spectra and single-epoch miniJPAS photometry, with no systematic difference between these and a scatter ranging from 0.4 to 0.07 dex for masses from log(MBH)≃8 to 9.75, respectively. Reverberation mapping studies show that single-epoch masses present approximately 0.4 dex precision, letting us conclude that our novel technique delivers black hole masses with only mildly lower precision than single-epoch spectroscopy. Conclusions. The J-PAS survey will soon start observing thousands of square degrees without any source preselection other than the photometric depth in the detection band, and thus single-epoch photometry has the potential to provide details on the physical properties of quasar populations that do not satisfy the preselection criteria of previous spectroscopic surveys. © ESO 2022., This work uses observations made with the JST/T250 telescope and PathFinder camera for the miniJPAS project at the Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre (OAJ) in Teruel, which is owned, managed, and operated by the Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón (CEFCA). This work made use of the following python packages: ASTROPY (Astropy Collaboration 2013, 2018), EMCEE (Foreman-Mackey et al. 2013), IPYTHON (Perez & Granger 2007), MATPLOTLIB (Hunter 2007), MPI4PY (Dalcín et al. 2005, 2008; Dalcin et al. 2011; Dalcin & Fang 2021), NUMPY (Harris et al. 2020), PYDOE2 (Rickard & Daniel 2018), and SCIPY (Virtanen et al. 2020). We acknowledge the OAJ Data Processing and Archiving Unit (UPAD) for reducing and calibrating miniJPAS data and the use of the Atlas EDR cluster at the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC). Funding for the J-PAS Project has been provided by the Governments of Spain and Aragón through the Fondo de Inversión de Teruel, European FEDER funding and the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, and by the Brazilian agencies FINEP, FAPESP, FAPERJ and by the National Observatory of Brazil. Additional funding was also provided by the Tartu Observatory and by the J-PAS Chinese Astronomical Consortium. Funding for OAJ, UPAD, and CEFCA has been provided by the Governments of Spain and Aragón through the Fondo de Inversiones de Teruel; the Aragón Government through the Research Groups E96, E103, and E16_17R; the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (MCIU/AEI/FEDER, UE) with grant PGC2018-097585-B-C21; the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO/FEDER, UE) under AYA2015-66211-C2-1-P, AYA2015-66211-C2-2, AYA2012-30789, and ICTS-2009-14; and European FEDER funding (FCDD10-4E-867, FCDD13-4E-2685). J.C.M. and S.B. acknowledge financial support from Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities through the project PGC2018-097585-B-C22. B.T. acknowledges support from the Israel Science Foundation (grant number 1849/19). C.Q. acknowledges support from Brazilian funding agencies FAPESP and CAPES. L.A.D.G. and R.G.D. acknowledge financial support from the State Agency for Research of the Spanish MCIU through the “Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa” award to the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (SEV-2017-0709), and R.G.D. also does it to the projects AYA2016-77846-P and PID2019-109067-GB100. C.H.M. acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation, and Universities through the project PGC2018-097585-B-C2. A.E. acknowledges the financial support from the European Union – NextGenerationEU and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through the Recovery and Resilience Facility project J-CAVA.

{We used the observations carried out by XMM in the COSMOS field over 3.5 yr to study the long term variability of a large sample of active galactic nuclei (AGNs) (638 sources) in a wide range of redshifts (0.1 {\lt} z {\lt} 3.5) and X-ray luminosities (10$^{41}$ {\lt} L $_{0.5-10}$ {\lt}10$^{45.5}$). Both a simple statistical method to assess the significance of variability and the Normalized Excess Variance ($\backslash$sigma \^{}$\{$2$\}$\_$\{$rms$\}$) parameter were used to obtain a quantitative measurement of the variability. Variability is found to be prevalent in most AGNs, whenever we have good statistics to measure it, and no significant differences between type 1 and type 2 AGNs were found. A flat (slope {\ndash}0.23 {\plusmn} 0.03) anti-correlation between $\backslash$sigma \^{}$\{$2$\}$\_$\{$rms$\}$ and X-ray luminosity is found when all significantly variable sources are considered together. When divided into three redshift bins, the anti-correlation becomes stronger and evolving with z, with higher redshift AGNs being more variable. We prove, however, that this effect is due to the pre-selection of variable sources: when considering all of the sources with an available $\backslash$sigma \^{}$\{$2$\}$\_$\{$rms$\}$ measurement, the evolution in redshift disappears. For the first time, we were also able to study long term X-ray variability as a function of M $_{BH}$ and Eddington ratio for a large sample of AGNs spanning a wide range of redshifts. An anti-correlation between $\backslash$sigma \^{}$\{$2$\}$\_$\{$rms$\}$ and M $_{BH}$ is found, with the same slope of anti-correlation between $\backslash$sigma \^{}$\{$2$\}$\_$\{$rms$\}$ and X-ray luminosity, suggesting that the latter may be a by-product of the former. No clear correlation is found between $\backslash$sigma \^{}$\{$2$\}$\_$\{$rms$\}$ and the Eddington ratio in our sample. Finally, no correlation is found between the X-ray $\backslash$sigma \^{}$\{$2$\}$\_$\{$rms$\}$ and optical variability. }

Quasi-stellar objects (QSOs) occur in galaxies in which supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are growing substantially through rapid accretion of gas. Many popular models of the co-evolutionary growth of galaxies and SMBHs predict that QSOs are also sites of substantial recent star formation, mediated by important processes, such as major mergers, which rapidly transform the nature of galaxies. A detailed study of the star-forming properties of QSOs is a critical test of such models. We present a far-infrared Herschel/PACS study of the mean star formation rate (SFR) of a sample of spectroscopically observed QSOs to z~2 from the COSMOS extragalactic survey. This is the largest sample to date of moderately luminous AGNs studied using uniform, deep far-infrared photometry. We study trends of the mean SFR with redshift, black hole mass, nuclear bolometric luminosity and specific accretion rate (Eddington ratio). To minimize systematics, we have undertaken a uniform determination of SMBH properties, as well as an analysis of important selection effects within spectroscopic QSO samples that influence the interpretation of SFR trends. We find that the mean SFRs of these QSOs are consistent with those of normal massive star-forming galaxies with a fixed scaling between SMBH and galaxy mass at all redshifts. No strong enhancement in SFR is found even among the most rapidly accreting systems, at odds with several co-evolutionary models. Finally, we consider the qualitative effects on mean SFR trends from different assumptions about the star-forming properties of QSO hosts and redshift evolution of the SMBH-galaxy relationship. While limited currently by uncertainties, valuable constraints on AGN-galaxy co-evolution can emerge from our approach., 10 figures, 1 table; accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics