Strong gravitational lensing by AGNs as a probe of the quasar-host relations in the distant Universe

Author:

Martin Millon, Frédéric Courbin, Aymeric Galan, Dominique Sluse, Xuheng Ding, Malte Tewes, S. G. Djorgovski

Keyword:

Astrophysics, Astrophysics of Galaxies, Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA)

journal:

date:

2023-05-31 16:00:00

Abstract

The tight correlations found between the mass of the supermassive black holes (SMBH) and their host galaxy luminosity, stellar mass, and velocity dispersion are often interpreted as a sign of their co-evolution. Studying these correlations across redshift provides a powerful insight into the evolutionary path followed by the quasar and its host galaxy. While the mass of the black hole is accessible from single-epoch spectra, measuring the mass of its host galaxy is challenging as the quasar largely overshines its host. Here, we present a novel technique to probe quasar-host relations beyond the local universe with strong gravitational lensing, hence overcoming the use of stellar population models or velocity dispersion measurements, both prone to degeneracies. We study in detail one of the three known cases of strong lensing by a quasar to accurately measure the mass of its host and to infer a total lensing mass of $\log_{10}(M_{\rm Tot, h}/M_{\odot}) = 10.27^{+0.06}_{-0.07}~$ within the Einstein radius of 1.2 kpc. The lensing measurement is more precise than any other alternative techniques and compatible with the local $M_{BH}$-$M_{\star, h}$ scaling relation. The sample of such quasar-galaxy or quasar-quasar lensing systems should reach a few hundreds with Euclid and Rubin-LSST, thus enabling the application of such a method with statistically significant sample sizes.

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