# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Soon after quasars were discovered, it was suggested that they are powered by the accretion of gas onto supermassive black holes at the centres of galaxies (Lynden Bell 1969). The space density of luminous quasars is, however, two order of magnitudes smaller than that of bright galaxies and there has been a long-standing debate whether quasars occur only in a subset of galaxies or whether all galaxies harbour a quasar for a short time (Rees 1984, Cavaliere & Szalay 1986, Rees 1990). In recent years there has been mounting observational evidence that the evolution of normal galaxies and quasars is closely linked and that quasars are short-lived. The evolution of the total star formation rate density of the Universe, the space density of starbursting galaxies and that of luminous quasars appear to be remarkably similar. All three show a strong increase of more than an order of magnitude from $`z=0`$ to $`z2`$ (Boyle & Terlevich 1998, Dickinson et al. 1998, Sanders & Mirabel 1996). There is also increasing dynamical evidence that supermassive black holes reside at the centres of most galaxies with substantial spheroidal components. The masses of the black holes scale linearly with the masses of the spheroids, with a constant of proportionality in the range $`0.0020.006`$. (Kormendy & Richstone 1995; Magorrian et al. 1998; van der Marel 1999). The mass function of nearby black holes derived using the observed bulge luminosity–black hole mass relation is also consistent with that inferred from the 5GHz radio emission in galactic cores and from the quasar luminosity function itself (Franceschini, Vercellone & Fabian 1998; Salucci et al. 1999). These results strongly support the idea that QSO activity, the growth of supermassive black holes and the formation of spheroids are all closely linked (e.g. Richstone et al. 1998; Haehnelt, Natarajan & Rees 1998; Cattaneo, Haehnelt & Rees 1999).

The most striking observed property of quasars is their strong evolution with redshift. A number of papers have shown that the rise in the space density of bright quasars from the earliest epochs to a peak at $`z2`$ can be naturally explained in hierarchical theories of structure formation if the formation of black holes is linked to the collapse of the first dark matter haloes of galactic mass (e.g. Efstathiou & Rees 1988, Carlberg 1990, Haehnelt & Rees 1993, Cavaliere, Perri & Vittorini 1997, Haiman & Loeb 1998). None of these papers provided more than a qualitative explanation for why the present abundance of bright quasars is two orders of magnitude below that at $`z2`$ (see also Blandford & Small 1992).

In this paper, we focus on the low redshift evolution of the quasar population and its connection to the hierarchical build-up of galaxies predicted in cold dark matter (CDM) -type cosmologies. The formation and evolution of galaxies in such cosmologies has been studied extensively using semi-analytic models of galaxy formation. These models follow the formation and evolution of galaxies within a merging hierarchy of dark matter halos. Simple prescriptions are adopted to describe gas cooling, star formation, supernova feedback and merging rates of galaxies. Stellar population synthesis models are used to generate galaxy luminosity functions, counts and redshift distributions for comparison with observations. It has been shown in many recent papers that hierarchical galaxy formation models can reproduce many observed properties of galaxies both at low and at high redshifts. Some highlights include variations in galaxy clustering with luminosity, morphology and redshift (Kauffmann, Nusser & Steinmetz 1997; Kauffmann et al 1999b, Baugh et al 1999), the evolution of cluster galaxies (in particular of ellipticals) (Kauffmann 1995; Kauffmann & Charlot 1998) and the properties of the Lyman break galaxy population at $`z3`$ (Baugh et al 1998; Governato et al. 1998; Somerville, Primack & Faber 1999; Mo, Mao & White 1999).

In these models, the quiescent accretion of gas from the halo results in the formation of a disk. If two galaxies of comparable mass merge, a spheroid is formed. It has been demonstrated that a merger origin for ellipticals can explain both their detailed internal structure (see for example Barnes 1988; Hernquist 1992,1993; Hernquist, Spergel & Heyl 1993; Heyl, Hernquist & Spergel 1994) and global population properties such as the slope and scatter of the colour-magnitude relation and its evolution to high redshift (Kauffmann & Charlot 1998). Simulations including a gas component (Negroponte & White 1983; Barnes & Hernquist 1991, 1996; Mihos & Hernquist 1994) have also shown that mergers drive gas far enough inwards to fuel nuclear starbursts, and probably also central black holes. This is the standard paradigm for the orgin of ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs), which can have star formation rates in excess of several hundred solar masses a year and are almost always associated with merging or interacting systems (Sanders & Mirabel 1996). A significant fraction of the ULIRGs also exhibit evidence of AGN activity (Genzel et al 1998).

In this paper, we assume that major mergers are responsible for the growth and fuelling of black holes in galactic nuclei. If two galaxies of comparable mass merge, the central black holes of the progenitors coalesce and a few percent of the gas in the merger remnant is accreted by the new black hole on a timescale of a few times $`10^7`$ years. Under these simple assumptions, the model is able to reproduce both the relation between bulge luminosity and black hole mass observed in nearby galaxies and the evolution of the quasar luminosity function with redshift. Our models also fit many aspects of the observed evolution of galaxies, including the present-day K-band luminosity function, the evolution of the star formation rate density as function of redshift, and the evolution of the total mass density in cold gas inferred from observations of damped Lyman-alpha systems. Finally, we study the evolution of the abundance of starbursting systems and the relationship between the luminosities of quasars and their host galaxies.

## 2 Review of the Semi-Analytic Models of Galaxy Formation

For most of this paper, the semi-analytic model we employ is that used by Kauffmann & Charlot (1998) to study the origin of the colour-magnitude relation of elliptical galaxies formed by mergers in a high-density ($`\mathrm{\Omega }=1`$, $`H_0`$ = 50 km s<sup>-1</sup> Mpc<sup>-1</sup>, $`\sigma _8=0.67`$) cold dark matter (CDM) Universe. The parameters we adopt are those of Model “A” listed in Table 1 of that paper. In order to study how changes in cosmological parameters affect our results, we have also considered a low-density model with $`\mathrm{\Omega }=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$, $`H_0=66`$ km s<sup>-1</sup> Mpc<sup>-1</sup> , $`\sigma _8=1`$. This model is discussed separately in section 7.

More details about semi-analytic techniques may be found in Kauffmann, White & Guiderdoni (1993), Kauffmann et al. (1999a), Cole et al. (1994) and Somerville & Primack (1999). Below we present a brief summary of the main ingredients of the model. Because quasar evolution in our model depends strongly on the evolution of cold gas, we pay particular attention to the parameters that control this.

1. Merging history of dark matter halos. We use an algorithm based on the extended Press-Schechter theory to generate Monte Carlo realizations of the merging paths of dark halos from high redshift until the present (see Kauffmann & White (1993) for details). This algorithm allows all the progenitors of a present-day object to be traced back to arbitrarily early times.
2. The cooling, star formation and feedback cycle We have adopted the simple model for cooling first introduced by White & Frenk (1991). All the relevant cooling rate equations are described in that paper. Dark matter halos are modelled as truncated isothermal spheres and it is assumed that as the halo forms, the gas relaxes to a distribution that exactly parallels that of the dark matter. Gas then cools, condenses and forms a rotationally supported disk at the centre of the halo.

We adopt the empirically-motivated star formation law for disk galaxies suggested by Kennicutt (1998), which has the form $`\dot{M}_{}=\alpha M_{\mathrm{cold}}/t_{\mathrm{dyn}}`$, where $`\alpha `$ is a free parameter and $`t_{\mathrm{dyn}}`$ is the dynamical time of the galaxy. If angular momentum is conserved, the cold gas becomes rotationally supported once it has collapsed by a factor of 10 on average, so the dynamical time may be written $`t_{\mathrm{dyn}}=0.1R_{\mathrm{vir}}/V_\mathrm{c}`$, where $`R_{\mathrm{vir}}`$ and $`V_\mathrm{c}`$ are the virial radius and circular velocity of the surrounding dark halo. Note that according to the simple spherical collapse model, the virial radius scales with circular velocity and with redshift as $`R_{\mathrm{vir}}V_\mathrm{c}(1+z)^{3/2}`$, so that $`t_{\mathrm{dyn}}`$ scales with redshift as $`(1+z)^{3/2}`$ and is independent of $`V_c`$.

Once stars form from the gas, it is assumed that supernovae can reheat some of the cold gas to the virial temperature of the halo. The amount of cold gas lost to the halo in time $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ can be estimated, using simple energy conservation arguments, as

$$\mathrm{\Delta }M_{\mathrm{reheat}}=ϵ\frac{4}{3}\frac{\dot{M}_{}\eta _{SN}E_{SN}}{V_c^2}\mathrm{\Delta }t,$$
(1)   
where $`ϵ`$ is an efficiency parameter, $`E_{\mathrm{SN}}10^{51}`$ erg is the kinetic energy of the ejecta from each supernova, and $`\eta _{\mathrm{SN}}`$ is the number of supernovae expected per solar mass of stars formed. The parameters $`\alpha `$ and $`ϵ`$ together control the fraction of baryons in the form of hot gas, cold gas and stars in dark matter halos. In practice, adjusting $`ϵ`$ changes the stellar mass of the galaxies, whereas adjusting $`\alpha `$ changes their cold gas content. We choose $`ϵ`$ to obtain a good fit to the observed present-day K-band galaxy luminosity function and $`\alpha `$ to reproduce the present cold gas mass of our own Milky Way ($`4\times 10^9M_{}`$). We have also run models where $`\alpha `$ is not a constant, but varies with redshift as $`\alpha (z)=\alpha (0)(1+z)^\gamma `$. For positive $`\gamma `$, less gas is turned into stars per dynamical time in galaxies at high redshift than at low redshift, as may be the case if the star formation efficiency increases with time. As shown in sections 3 and 5, this scaling of $`\alpha `$ has very little effect on the properties of galaxies at $`z=0`$, but can produce a much stronger evolution of the cold gas fractions to high redshift and so a more strongly evolving quasar population. In the following sections, we will show that $`\gamma =12`$ is required to fit both the evolution of the total mass density in cold gas inferred from damped Ly$`\alpha `$ absorption sustems and the rise in the space density of bright quasars from $`z=0`$ to $`z=2`$.
3. Cooling flows in massive halos. As discussed in previous papers, the cooling rates given by the White & Frenk (1991) model lead to the formation of central cluster galaxies that are too bright and too blue to be consistent with observation if the cooling gas is assumed to form stars with a standard initial mass function. Our usual “fix” for this problem has been to assume that gas cooling in halos with circular velocity greater than some fixed value does not form visible stars. One question is whether this material should then be available to fuel a quasar. We have considered two cases: 1) Gas that cools in halos with circular velocity greater than $`600`$ km s<sup>-1</sup> does not form visible stars, nor does it accrete onto the central blackhole. 2) Gas that cools in these massive halos does not form stars, but it is available to fuel quasars.
4. The merging of galaxies and the formation of ellipticals and bulges. As time proceeds, a halo will merge with a number of others, forming a new halo of larger mass. All gas that has not already cooled is assumed to be shock heated to the virial temperature of this new halo. This hot gas then cools onto the central galaxy of the new halo, which is identified with the central galaxy of its largest progenitor. The central galaxies of the other progenitors become satellite galaxies, which are able to merge with the central galaxy on a dynamical friction timescale. If two galaxies merge and the mass ratio between the satellite and the central object is greater than 0.3, we add the stars of both objects together and create a bulge component. If $`M_{\mathrm{sat}}/M_{\mathrm{central}}<0.3`$, we add the stars and cold gas of the satellite to the disk component of the central galaxy. When a bulge is formed by a merger, the cold gas not accreted by the blackhole is transformed into stars in a “burst” with a timescale of $`10^8`$ years. Further cooling of gas in the halo may lead to the formation of a new disk. The morphological classification of galaxies is made according their B-band disk-to-bulge ratios. If $`M(B)_{\mathrm{bulge}}M(B)_{\mathrm{total}}<1`$ mag, then the galaxy is classified as early-type (elliptical or S0).
5. Stellar population models. We use the new metallicity-dependent stellar population synthesis models of Bruzual & Charlot (1999,in preparation), which include updated stellar evolutionary tracks and new spectral libraries. The chemical enrichment of galaxies is modelled as described in Kauffmann & Charlot (1998). As chemical evolution plays little role in our quasar models, we do not describe the recipes again in this paper.

## 3  The Global Evolution of Stars and Gas

Figure 1 shows the K-band luminosity function of galaxies at $`z=0`$ compared with recent observational results. The K-band luminosities of galaxies are a good measure of their total stellar masses, rather than their instantaneous star formation rates, and are affected very little by dust extinction. By normalizing in the K-band, we ensure that our models have produced roughly the correct total mass density of stars by the present day. As can be seen, virtually identical results are obtained for a model where the star formation efficiency $`\alpha `$ is constant and for a model where $`\alpha (1+z)^2`$. Figure 1 also shows that cutting off star formation in cooling flows is required in order to avoid producing too many very luminous galaxies.

Figure 2 shows the evolution of the star formation rate density in the models. The data points plotted in figure 2 have been taken from Lilly et al (1996), Connolly et al (1997), Madau et al (1996) and Steidel et al (1999), and have been corrected for the effects of dust extinction as described in Steidel et al (1999). As can be seen, the evolution of the SFR density in the models agrees reasonably well with the observations. Both show a factor $`10`$ increase from the present day to $`z12`$, followed by a plateau. In the models, there is no strong decrease in the SFR density until redshifts greater than 6. In the model where $`\alpha `$ evolves with redshift as $`(1+z)^2`$, the percentage of stars formed in merger-induced bursts increases from less tham 10% at $`z=0`$ to 50% at $`z=2.5`$. By redshift 4, two-thirds of the total star formation occurs in the burst mode. In the model with constant $`\alpha `$, the fraction of stars formed in bursts increases much less, from $``$ 10 % at $`z=0`$ to 25 % at high redshift. As will be demonstrated in the next sections, the constant $`\alpha `$ model is unable to fit the observed increase in the quasar space densities at high redshift.

Figure 3 compares the predicted evolution of the mean mass density in the form of cold galactic gas in the models compared with the values derived from surveys of damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems by Storrie-Lombardi, McMahon & Irwin (1996). As can be seen, the model with $`\alpha (1+z)^1`$ agrees well with the data, but the model with constant $`\alpha `$ severely underpredicts the mass density of cold gas at high redshifts. Note that the error bars on the data points in figure 2 are large and that taking into account the effects of dust extinction would tend to move the points upwards (Pei & Fall 1995). The model in which $`\alpha (1+z)^2`$ thus cannot be excluded. As we discuss in section 5, this model leads to the strongest evolution in the quasar space densities.

## 4 The Growth of Black Holes and the Bulge Luminosity –Black Hole Mass Relation

In our models, supermassive black holes grow by merging and accretion of gas during major mergers of galaxies. We assume that when any merger between two galaxies takes place, the two pre-existing black holes in the progenitor galaxies coalesce instantaneously. In major mergers, some fraction of the cold gas in the progenitor galaxies is also accreted onto the new black hole. As discussed in the previous section, the cold gas fractions of galaxies increase strongly with redshift. In hierarchical cosmologies, low mass bulges form at higher redshift than high mass bulges. To obtain the observed linear relation between black hole mass and bulge mass, the fraction of gas accreted by the black hole must be smaller for low mass galaxies, which seems reasonable because gas is more easily expelled from shallower potential wells (equation 1). We adopt a prescription in which the ratio of accreted mass to total available cold gas mass scales with halo circular velocity in the same way as the mass of stars formed per unit mass of cooling gas. For the parameters of our model, this may be written as

$$M_{\mathrm{acc}}=\frac{f_{\mathrm{BH}}M_{\mathrm{cold}}}{1+(280\mathrm{k}\mathrm{m}\mathrm{s}^1/\mathrm{V}_\mathrm{c})^2}.$$
(2)   
$`f_{\mathrm{BH}}`$ is a free parameter, which we set by matching to the observed relation between bulge luminosity and black hole mass of Magorrian et al (1998) at a fiducial bulge luminosity $`M_V=19`$. We obtain $`f_{\mathrm{BH}}=0.03`$ for the model with $`\alpha (1+z)^2`$, $`f_{\mathrm{BH}}=0.04`$ for the model with $`\alpha (1+z)^1`$ and $`f_{\mathrm{BH}}=0.095`$ for the constant $`\alpha `$ model, a value which is uncomfortably large.

There are no doubt physical processes other than major mergers that contribute to the growth of supermassive black holes. For example, we have neglected the accretion of gas during minor mergers when a small satellite galaxy falls into a much larger galaxy (Hernquist & Mihos 1995). We have also neglected the accretion of gas from the surrounding hot halo (Fabian & Rees 1995, Nulsen & Fabian 1999). It has been suggested that this may occur in the form of advection dominated accretion flows (Narayan & Yi 1995) and may produce the hard X-ray background (Di Matteo and Fabian 1997). If such processes contribute significantly to the growth of supermassive black holes, we would need to lower the fraction of the cold gas accreted by the black hole during major mergers. The general trends predicted by our model would not be affected.

We have produced absolute magnitude-limited catalogues of bulges from our models and show scatterplots of black hole mass versus bulge luminosity in figure 4. The thick solid line shows the relation derived by Magorrian et al and the dashed lines show the 1$`\sigma `$ scatter of their observational data around this relation. The first panel illustrates what happens if we add a fixed fraction of the gas to the black hole at each merging event – the relation is considerably too shallow. The second and third panels show the relation obtained if the prescription in equation 2 is adopted. As can be seen, the slope is now correct. The model with $`\alpha (1+z)^2`$ exhibits considerably more scatter than the constant $`\alpha `$ model. This scatter arises from the fact that bulges of given luminosity form over a wide range in redshift. Because galaxies are more gas rich at higher redshift, bulges that form early will contain bigger black holes than bulges that form late. The gas fractions of galaxies rise more steeply in the model with $`\alpha (1+z)^2`$ than in the model with $`\alpha `$ constant, giving rise to the increased scatter in panel 3.

One observationally-testable prediction of our model is that elliptical galaxies that formed recently should harbour black holes with smaller masses than the spheroid population as a whole. This is illustrated in the fourth panel of figure 4, where we show the relation between bulge luminosity and black hole mass for “isolated” ellipticals in the $`\alpha (1+z)^2`$ model. These are elliptical galaxies that reside at the centres of dark matter halos of intermediate mass; the fact that they have not yet accreted a new disk component means that they were formed by a major merger at most a few Gyr ago. To select such objects in the real Universe, one would look for ellipticals outside clusters that have no neighbours of comparable or larger luminosity within a radius of $`1.5`$ Mpc. Conversely we predict that rich cluster ellipticals and bulges with large disks should have relatively massive black holes for their luminosity since these objects formed early.

## 5  Evolution of the Quasar Luminosity Function

Quasars have long been known to evolve very strongly. Their comoving space density increases by nearly two orders of magnitude from $`z0.1`$ to an apparent peak at $`z2.5`$. The evolution at redshifts exceeding $`2.5`$ is controversial: there is evidence that the number density of optically bright quasars declines from $`z2.5`$ to $`z5`$ (Shaver et al. 1996, see Madau 1999 for a review) , but it remains to be seen whether the same is true for fainter objects or for active galactic nuclei detected at X-ray wavelengths (Miyaji, Hasinger & Schmidt 1998).

In a scenario where black holes grow by merging and by accretion of gas, the number density of the most massive black holes increases monotonically with time. This is illustrated in figure 5, where we plot the black hole mass function in our model at a series of redshifts. From now on, unless stated otherwise, we only show results for our “fiducial” model in which the star formation efficiency $`\alpha `$ scales as $`(1+z)^2`$ and gas cooling in halos with circular velocities greater than 600 km s<sup>-1</sup> is not accreted by black holes.

Quasars are activated when two galaxies (and their central black holes) merge and fresh gas is accreted onto the new black hole in the remnant. Merging rates increase with redshift in hierarchical cosmologies and it has been suggested that this alone might explain the observed evolution of quasars (Carlberg 1990). Figure 6 demonstrates that mergers alone will not do the job. We plot the evolution of the number density of the major mergers that produce black holes of various masses. The number density of merging events producing black holes of $`10^{10}M_{}`$ decreases at high redshift, simply because such massive objects form very late. The number density of mergers producing smaller black holes does increase to high redshift, but the effect is too small to explain the observed increase in quasar space densities from $`z=0`$ to $`z=2`$.

Another hypothesis is that black holes run out of fuel at late times. That such an effect does exist in our models is shown in figure 7, where we plot the redshift dependence of the amount of gas accreted by merged black holes of given mass. The amount of accreted gas accreted increases by a factor $`3`$ from $`z=0`$ to $`z=1`$. Note that in our models quasars do not run out of fuel because the gas supply is almost exhausted at present, but because cool gas is converted into stars more efficiently at low redshift.

In order to make direct comparisons with observational data, we must specify how a black hole accretion event turns into a quasar light curve. We assume that a fixed fraction $`ϵ_B`$ of the rest mass energy of the accreted material is radiated in the B-band. This results in the following transformation between the accreted gas mass $`M_{\mathrm{acc}}`$ and the absolute B-band magnitude of the quasar at the peak of its light curve,

$$M_B(\mathrm{peak})=2.5\mathrm{log}(ϵ_BM_{\mathrm{acc}}/t_{\mathrm{acc}})27.45.$$
(3)   
The timecscale $`t_{\mathrm{acc}}`$ over which gas is accreted onto the black hole during a merger is a second parameter of the model and we have to make some assumption as to its scaling with mass and redshift. We explore two possibilities: 1)$`t_{\mathrm{acc}}(1+z)^{1.5}`$. In this case, $`t_{\mathrm{acc}}`$ scales with redshift in the same way as $`t_{\mathrm{dyn}}`$, as expected if the radius of the accretion disk were to scale with the radius of the galaxy. 2) $`t_{\mathrm{acc}}`$ = constant. In both cases we assume $`t_{\mathrm{acc}}`$ to be independent of mass.

Note that if we change the radiative efficiency parameter $`ϵ_B`$, the quasar luminosities simply scale by a constant factor. If we change the accretion timescale $`t_{\mathrm{acc}}`$, we affect both the number densities and the luminosities of the quasars. It is usually assumed that the luminosities of quasars should not exceed the Eddington limit and we therefore introduce an upper limit to the B-band luminosity of quasars that scales linearly with the mass of the black hole $`L_B(\mathrm{max})=0.1L_{\mathrm{edd}}0.14(M_{\mathrm{bh}}/10^8M_{})10^{46}`$ erg s<sup>-1</sup>. Some of our quasars accrete at rates higher than that necessary to sustain the Eddington luminosity, especially at high redshift and in models with short $`t_{\mathrm{acc}}`$. These quasars nevertheless obey the Eddington limit because a “trapping surface” develops within which the radiation advects inwards rather than escapes. As a result, the emission efficiency declines inversely with the accretion rate for such objects (Begelman 1978).

Finally, we assume that the luminosity of a quasar a time $`t`$ after the merging event declines as

$$L_B(t)=L_B(\mathrm{peak})\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{t}/\mathrm{t}_{\mathrm{acc}}).$$
(4)   
We have chosen to normalize our model luminosity function to the abundance of bright ($`M_B<24`$) quasars at redshift 2. We have chosen three values of $`t_{\mathrm{acc}}`$ for illustrative purposes: $`10^7`$, $`3\times 10^7`$, and $`10^8`$ years. The typical values derived for $`ϵ_B`$ are in the range $`0.0020.008`$. This leaves some room for emission in accretion modes other than that traced by optically bright quasars. Two possibilities we do not treat here are advection dominated accretion flows and dust-obscured accretion (see Haehnelt, Natarajan & Rees 1998 for a recent discussion).

The resulting luminosity functions in four different redshift intervals are shown for our fiducial model in figure 8. For this plot we assumed that the accretion time scales in the same way as the host galaxy dynamical time, $`t_{\mathrm{acc}}(1+z)^{1.5}`$. The data points plotted as filled circles are taken from the compilation by Hartwick & Schade(1990). The triangles are from the Hamburg/ESO bright quasar survey by Koehler et al (1997). These authors find that luminous quasars are much more numerous in the local Universe than previous smaller surveys indicated. We find that an accretion timescale of about $`10^7\mathrm{yr}`$ yield results that are in reasonable agreement with the data. Figure 9 shows the evolution of the space density of quasars with luminosity $`M_B<26`$ and $`M_B<24`$ as a function of redshift. The symbols on the plot represent data points compiled from a number of sources (see figure caption for details). Note that at B-band magnitudes brighter than $`26`$, the quasar number densities decrease sharply. As a result, small changes in model parameters, such as the treatment of gas in cooling flows, can make quite a large difference to our results (see figure 11 below). We therefore regard the comparison at $`M_B<24`$ as a more robust test of the model. Our “best fit” $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1`$ CDM model with $`\alpha (1+z)^2`$ reproduces the observed decline in quasar space density from $`z=2`$ to the present reasonably well, but the corresponding evolution in the mean mass density of cold gas is stronger than inferred from the damped Lyman-alpha systems (figure 3). As we will show in section 7, the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model provides a better overall fit to the observations.

In figure 10, we plot the mean ratio of quasar luminosity to Eddington luminosity at a series of redshifts for our best-fit model with $`t_{\mathrm{acc}}(z)=1.0\times 10^7(1+z)^{1.5}`$ Gyr. The error bars show the 25th and 75th percentiles of the distribution. For faint quasars at low redshift, the values of $`L/L_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$ range from 0.01 to 0.1. These values increase for bright quasars and at high redshifts. By $`z=3`$, $`L/L_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$ has increased to values between 0.3 and 1. These results agree reasonably well with observed values of $`L/L_{\mathrm{Edd}}`$ inferred from the kinematics of the broad-line region, X-ray variability and spectral fitting of accretion disc models (see Wandel 1998 for a review; Laor 1998; Haiman & Menou 1998; Salucci et al 1999).

We now study the sensitivity of our results to our assumptions about cooling, star formation and accretion timescales. The leftmost panel in figure 11 shows the evolution of the B-band luminosity function for a model with $`\alpha (1+z)^1`$ and $`t_{\mathrm{acc}}(1+z)^{1.5}`$. In the other panels we show the effect of varying a single parameter in the model:

1. Redshift dependence of the accretion time.  If $`t_{\mathrm{acc}}`$ is held contant, the space density of the brightest quasars evolves very little from $`z=0`$ to $`z=2`$.
2. Redshift dependence of $`\alpha `$. If $`\alpha `$ is a constant, the space density of quasars of all luminosities increases much less from $`z=0`$ to $`z=2`$. As we have shown, a very strong scaling of $`\alpha `$ with redshift ($`\alpha (1+z)^2`$) is required in order to come reasonably close to fitting the observed increase for an $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1`$ CDM model.
3. Cooling flow gas as fuel for black holes? If gas in cooling flows can fuel black holes, the number of very luminous quasars at low redshifts increases substantially. As a result, the evolution at the bright end of the luminosity function is weaker than before. This model can fit the Koehler et al (1997) luminosity function reasonably well at $`z=0`$. The model also produces a luminosity function shape that is closer to a power-law at all redshifts.

## 6 Further Model Predictions

### 6.1 The Host Galaxies of Quasars

Recent near-infrared and Hubble Space Telescope (HST) imaging studies of quasar host-galaxies at low redshifts show that luminous quasars reside mainly in luminous early-type hosts (McLeod & Rieke 1995; Hutchings 1995; Taylor et al 1996; McLeod 1997; Bahcall et al 1997; Boyce et al 1998; McLure et al 1998). There also appears to be an upper bound to the quasar luminosity as a function of host galaxy stellar mass (McLeod & Rieke 1995).

In our models, quasars are only activated by major mergers which also result in the formation of a spheroidal remnant galaxy. By definition, all quasar hosts are thus either ellipticals or spirals in the process of merging. This is no doubt an oversimplified picture. It is certainly possible that minor mergers or galaxy encounters trigger gas accretion onto the central black hole. It is also likely that this is more important for low luminosity quasars.

In figure 12, we show scatterplots of host galaxy luminosity versus quasar luminosity at a series of different redshifts. For reference, the horizontal line in each plot shows present-day value of $`L_{}`$ for galaxies. At low redshift, quasars with magnitudes brighter than $`M_B=23`$ reside mostly in galaxies more luminous than $`L_{}`$. The luminosity of the host correlates with the luminosity of the quasar, but there is substantial scatter ( typically a factor $`10`$ in host galaxy luminosity at fixed quasar B-band magnitude). At low quasar luminosities, the scatter is large because the sample includes both low mass galaxies at peak quasar luminosity and high mass galaxies seen some time after the accretion event. At high quasar luminosities, the scatter decreases and the sample consists only of massive galaxies “caught in the act”. Our results at low redshift agree remarkably well with a recent compilation of ground-based and HST observations of quasar hosts by Mcleod, Rieke & Storrie-Lombardi (1999). In figure 12, we have drawn a triangle around the region spanned by their observational data points. At high redshifts, our models predict that the quasars should be found in progressively less luminous host galaxies. This is not surprising because in hierarchical models, the massive galaxies that host luminous quasars at the present epoch are predicted to have assembled recently (Kauffmann & Charlot 1998). We caution, however, that the the luminosities of quasars hosted by galaxies at different epochs depends strongly on the redshift scaling of $`t_{\mathrm{acc}}`$. As discussed previously, smaller accretion timescales mean that luminous quasars can be located in smaller host galaxies. In section 7, we explore the extent to which the predicted masses of the host galaxies depend on the choice of cosmology.

### 6.2 Evolution of Starbursting Galaxies

An important result from the IRAS satellite was the discovery of galaxies with luminosities in the far-infrared (8-1000 $`\mu `$m) that exceed their optical or UV luminosities by factors of up to 80. The brightest ($`>10^{12}L_{}`$) of these objects are often referred to as ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) and their space densities are comparable to those of quasars of similar power. The nature of the energy source powering the ULIRGs has been a subject of intense debate. One hypothesis is that they are powered by dust-embedded AGNs. Alternatively, their far-infrared luminosity may be provided by an intense burst of star formation, with implied star formation rates $`1001000M_{}`$ yr<sup>-1</sup>. Recently, Genzel et al. (1998) have used ISO spectroscopy to argue that the majority (70-80 %) of these objects are dominated by star formation, with about $`25\%`$ powered by AGNs. The Hubble Space Telescope has been used to study the morphologies of a sample of 150 ULIRGs (Borne et al 1999) and in almost all cases, the objects are made up of multiple subcomponents. This is taken as evidence that most ULIRGs are interacting or merging systems. ULIRGs have now been detected at redshifts up to $`z1`$ (Van der Werf et al 1999, Clements et al 1999), but the total number of objects at high-z is currently too small to draw firm conclusions about evolution rates. This situation will no doubt change with the next generation of IR telescopes, SOFIA, SIRTF, IRIS and FIRST.

In figure 13, we show how the comoving number density of gas-rich mergers evolves with redshift in the model with $`\alpha (1+z)^2`$. We plot the number density of mergers between galaxies containing more than $`10^9`$, $`10^{10}`$ and $`3\times 10^{10}`$ $`M_{}`$ of cold gas averaged over an interval of 1 Gyr. In order to transform the values shown on the plot to a space density of starbursting galaxies, we would need to make some assumptions about the typical timescale and efficiency with which the gas is converted into stars, and whether or not this is likely to scale with redshift. Since there is not yet any available data to which we can fit our predictions, we prefer to leave our plot in its “raw” form. For example at $`z=0`$, if one assumes a typical star formation timescale of $`10^8`$ years and a gas-to-star conversion efficiency of 100%, then one obtains a space density of objects with star formation rates in excess of $`100M_{}`$ yr<sup>-1</sup> of $`3\times 10^6`$ Mpc<sup>-3</sup>, in reasonable agreement with what is observed. Our models predict that the space density of gas rich mergers evolves strongly with redshift; the density of mergers involving more than $`10^{10}`$ $`M_{}`$ of gas increases by more than a factor of 50 from redshift 0, reaches a very broad peak at $`z24`$, and then declines again. Note that this peak occurs at lower redshift for the most massive systems, simply because they form later. Finally, our models predict that the ratio of young stars formed in the burst to that of “old” stars formed in the progenitors, should increase strongly with redshift. This is illustrated in the bottom panel of figure 13, where we show that the ratio of the total mass of gas $`M_{\mathrm{gas}}`$ to the total mass of stars $`M_{\mathrm{stars}}`$ in the two galaxies before they merge evolves by a factor of $`510`$ from 0.1 at $`z=0`$ to 0.7 at $`z=3`$. In a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model (section 7), there is a milder evolution of the gas-to-star ratio with redshift.

### 6.3 Structural Properties of the Merger Remnants

Low-luminosity ellipticals and spiral bulges possess steeply rising central stellar density profiles that approximate power laws, whereas high-luminosity ellipticals have central profiles with much shallower slopes (termed cores). The power-law cusps in small spheroids, their disky isophotes and their rapid rotation, led Faber et al (1997) to suggest that they formed in gas-rich dissipative mergers. Large spheroids, with their low rotation and boxy isophotes, plausibly formed in near dissipationless mergers. In this case the orbital decay of the massive black hole binary can scour out a core in the stellar mass distribution (Quinlan 1996; Quinlan & Hernquist 1997). One may ask whether such a scenario is viable in the hierarchical merger models presented in this paper. Figure 14 illustrates that the mergers that form low-luminosity ellipticals are indeed substantially more gas rich than the mergers that form high-luminosity ellipticals. This is because small ellipticals typically form at high redshift from mergers of low mass spirals with high gas fractions. Conversely, massive ellipticals form a low redshift from massive spirals that contain much less gas. More detailed dynamical modelling is required in order to demonstrate that this correlation is sufficient to explain the observed dichotomy of core profiles, isophote shapes and rotation speeds.

## 7  The Influence of Cosmological Parameters

All results shown so far have been for a CDM cosmology with $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1`$, $`H_0=`$ 50 km s<sup>-1</sup> and $`\sigma _8=0.67`$. Although we could explain the evolution of the quasar luminosity function in a qualitative sense, the detailed fits to the observational data were not quite satisfactory. In particular, our “fiducial” model in which the star formation efficiency parameter $`\alpha `$ scaled with redshift as $`\alpha (1+z)^2`$ resulted in too much cold gas at high redshift.

In figures 15-17 we show fits to the data obtained for the popular $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM cosmology ($`\mathrm{\Omega }=0.3`$, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }=0.7`$, $`H_0=`$ 70 km s<sup>-1</sup> and $`\sigma _8=1`$). We note that quasar luminosity functions in the literature are almost always computed assuming a cosmology with $`q_0=0.5`$ and $`H_0=`$ 50 km s<sup>-1</sup>. In order to avoid having to re-analyze the real observational data, we choose to transform our model predictions to the values that would be obtained if the observations were analyzed assuming an Einstein-de Sitter universe with Hubble Constant $`h=0.5`$. Because structure forms earlier in the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM cosmology, galaxy-galaxy merging rates are substantially lower at $`z=0`$ than in the high-density CDM cosmology. As a result, we do not require an very strong evolution in the cold gas content of galaxies to reproduce the strong decline in quasar space densities from $`z2`$ to the present day. Our best-fit model has $`\alpha (1+z)^1`$ and $`t_{acc}(z=0)=2.5\times 10^7`$ Gyr. In addition we assume that $`t_{\mathrm{acc}}`$ scales in the same way as the host galaxy dynamical time in a $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM cosmology: $`t_{\mathrm{acc}}(0.7+0.3(1+z)^3)^{1/2}`$ (Mo, Mao & White 1998). As seen in figures 15-17, the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model can simultaneosly fit the evolution of cold gas inferred from the damped systems and the decline in quasar space density from $`z=2`$ to the present day.

We also find that the masses of quasar host galaxies do not decline as rapidly with redshift in this low-density model. As shown in figure 18, the host galaxies of bright quasars in the SCDM model are slightly more massive than those in the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM at $`z=0.5`$. By $`z=2`$, however, the SCDM hosts are 60% less massive on average.

Most of the other observed properties of the galaxies and quasars in the best-fitting $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model, including the K-band luminosity function, the evolution of the star formation rate density and the bulge luminosity/ black hole mass relation, are similar to those of the best-fitting SCDM model. For brevity, we will not show these again.

## 8 Summary & Discussion

The aim of this paper has been to demonstrate that the redshift evolution of galaxies and quasars can be explained in a unified way within hierarchical models of structure formation. This appears possible provided: a) black holes form and grow mainly during the major mergers that are responsible for the formation of ellipticals; and b) the gas consumption efficiency in galaxies scales with redshift so that galaxies have higher cold gas fractions at earlier times.

We have set the free parameters controlling star formation and feedback in our model to match the stellar mass function of present-day galaxies, the observed redshift evolution of the star formation rate density, and the evolution of the total cold gas content of the Universe as inferred from observations of damped Lyman alpha systems. We have assumed that during major mergers, the black holes in the progenitor galaxies coalesce and a few percent of the available cold gas is accreted by the new black hole. The fraction of accreted gas was chosen to match the observed relation between bulge mass and black hole mass at the present day. We obtain a linear relation if the fuelling of black holes is less efficient in low mass galaxies. The scatter in the model relation arises because bulges form over a wide range in redshift.

The greatest success of our model is its ability to explain the strong decrease in the space density of bright quasars from $`z=2`$ to $`z=0`$. We assume that when a black hole accretes gas, about 1 percent of the rest mass energy of this material is radiated in the B-band. The strong decrease in quasar activity results from a combination of three factors i) a decrease in the merging rates of intermediate mass galaxies at late times, ii) a decrease in the gas available to fuel the most massive black holes and iii) the assumption that black holes accrete gas more slowly at late times. The evolution of merging rates is the most secure feature of the model, since it is a simple consequence of the growth of structure in the dark matter component. The Press-Schechter-based algorithms that we employ have been tested against N-body simulations and have found to work reasonably well ( Kauffmann & White 1993; Lacey & Cole 1994 ). The evolution of the gas supply, on the other hand, is strongly dependent on the chosen parametrization of star formation and feedback in the models. It is encouraging that the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model in particular can match both the observed evolution of quasars and the increase in cold gas with redshift inferred from observations of damped Lyman alpha absorbers. Future HI observations of galaxies at high redshift will yield more direct information on how the gas-to-stellar mass ratios of galaxies evolve with lookback time. The increase in the gas fractions of galaxies at high redshift also leads to a strong evolution in the space density of merger-induced starbursts. Our results favour rather short accretion times onto the central black hole ( $`10^7`$ years).

Our model also reproduces the luminosities of the host galaxies of low-redshift quasars. We predict that quasar hosts are on average a factor 10 less massive at $`z=2`$ than at $`z=0`$ if the accretion timescale evolves $`(1+z)^{3/2}`$ as in our fiducial $`\mathrm{\Omega }=1`$ model. If the accretion timescale evolves less strongly, the hosts will be brighter. Haehnelt, Natarajan & Rees (1998) have suggested that future measurements of the clustering strengths of high redshift quasars should determine whether they reside in low mass (and thus weakly clustered) galaxies or in high mass systems which should cluster more strongly. The low-density $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$CDM model predicts a smaller drop in quasar host mass at high redshift: the hosts are on average a factor $`5`$ less massive at $`z=2`$ than at $`z=0`$.

Finally, we have presented some results on the nature of the merging process by which ellipticals form. One basic feature of the hierarchical galaxy formation scenario is that the most massive spheroids form late. The strong decrease in the cold gas content of galaxies inferred from damped Ly$`\alpha `$ systems and required to explain the observed evolution of quasars means that the most massive ellipticals must form in nearly dissipationless mergers. It is interesting that dissipationless mergers may also be required to explain the core structure and the boxy isophotes observed in massive ellipticals.

Our assumptions regarding the growth of supermassive black holes and the resulting optical quasar emission are deliberately simple. In reality these processes will probably depend in a more complicated way on the properties of the merging galaxies. Furthermore there should be some accretion due to minor mergers and non-merging encounters, as well as accretion from the hot gas halos of elliptical galaxies and clusters. Nevertheless, our results demonstrate that the evolution of galaxies, the growth of supermassive black holes and the evolution of quasars and starbursts, can all be explained in consistent way in a hierarchical cosmogony.

Acknowledgments   
We thank Christian Kaiser, Philip Best, Simon White and Huub Rottgering for helpful discussions and comments on the manuscript.