Luminosity and stellar mass functions of discs and spheroids in the SDSS and the supermassive black hole mass function

Creators: Benson, A. J.; Džanović, Dajana; Frenk, C. S.; Sharples, Ray

Abstract

Using the galactica (GALaxy Automated ComponenT Image Construction Algorithm) code of Benson et al., we obtain quantitative measurements of spheroid-to-disc ratios for a sample of 8839 galaxies observed in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We carry out extensive tests of this code and of gim2d, finding that they perform similarly in all respects. From the spheroid and disc luminosities, we construct luminosity and stellar mass functions for each component and estimate the relative luminosity and stellar mass densities of discs and spheroids in the local Universe. Assuming a simple one-to-one mapping between spheroid mass and the mass of a central supermassive black hole, we provide the most accurate determination so far of the black hole mass function in the local universe. From this, we infer a cosmological mass density of black holes of ρ_• = (3.77 ± 0.97) × 10^5 h M_⊙ Mpc^(−3) . We compare our results to predictions from current hierarchical models of galaxy formation and these are found to fare well in predicting the qualitative trends observed. We find that stars in discs contribute 35–51 per cent of the local stellar mass density.

Additional Information

© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 RAS. Accepted 2007 April 17. Received 2007 April 12; in original form 2006 December 23. We are extremely grateful to Chris Miller for providing us with all of the SDSS EDR imaging data and Robert Nichol and Tomotsugu Goto for the encouragement given in the early days of this work. We also wish to thank Carlton Baugh for providing his code for computing K+E corrections, Rowena Malbon for providing theoretical predictions for black hole mass functions from the GALFORM semi-analytic model (http://www.galform.org) and Hans Walter Rix and the anonymous referee for valuable discussions. We are particularly grateful to Simon White whose insightful comments on an early draft of the paper led us to revise our initial analysis and conclusions substantially. AJB acknowledges support from the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, and from a Royal Society University Research Fellowship during part of this work. CSF is the holder of a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit award. Funding for the creation and distribution of the SDSS Archive has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Participating Institutions, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Energy, the Japanese Monbukagakusho and the Max Planck Society. The SDSS Web site is http://www.sdss.org/ The SDSS is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium (ARC) for the Participating Institutions. The Participating Institutions are the University of Chicago, Fermilab, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Japan Participation Group, the Johns Hopkins University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy (MPIA), the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics (MPA), New Mexico State University, University of Pittsburgh, Princeton University, the United States Naval Observatory and the University of Washington.

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