Luminosity and spectral evolution of QSOs

Abstract

We apply the observed spectral states of the Galactic black hole candidates (GBHCs) to the quasi-stellar object (QSO) luminosity evolution based on the correlation between luminosity and the spectrum, which is strongly supported by the similarities of emission mechanisms in GBHCs and QSOs. We derive the QSO luminosity evolution trends in the UV/optical and the X-ray energy bands and demonstrate that their trends are significantly affected by the spectral evolution. Each energy band shows distinct evolution properties. We test one of the widely discussed cosmological evolution scenarios of QSOs, in which QSOs evolve as a single long-lived population, and show that the resulting luminosity functions seen in different energy bands exhibit distinguishable and potentially observable evolution signatures in the X-ray energy bands.