Feeding black holes through galaxy mergers: the clustering of simulated quasars and the "merger bias"
Different physical processes such as major/minor mergers, disk instabilities, or stellar mass loss, can trigger black hole accretion and AGN activity by channeling gas towards galaxy centers, and these feeding modes are expected to show differences in their dependence on environment and redshift. Using models for galaxy formation applied to the outputs of the Millennium Simulation we predicted the clustering properties of quasars triggered by
mergers and the good agreement with the most recent data of quasar clustering
seems to lead support to the conjecture that galaxy mergers could be the main physical process responsible for triggering efficient black hole accretion. We also explored the significance of the "merger bias" on quasar clustering using both semi-analytical models and simulations, and I will discuss the implications of this effect on the assumption of merger-driven quasar activity.