Astronomy Tea Talk

  Understanding the influence of black hole growth on galaxy evolution over cosmic time requires a census of the AGN population, not only in respect of their luminosity but also of their black hole masses and accretion rates. We present results on the joint determination of the active black hole mass function and the Eddington ratio function of broad line AGN at two critical redshift regimes. First at z=0, based on the Hamburg/ESO Survey, which establishes the local zero point, and second at 1<z<2, combining the bright, large area SDSS survey with two deep surveys, zCOSMOS and VVDS. The addition of the deep zCOSMOS and VVDS surveys are essential to cover a wide luminosity range and thus constrain the black hole mass and Eddington ratio function at lower values and derive the cosmic evolution of these distribution functions.