The impact of angular momentum on black hole accretion rates in simulations of galaxy formation

By Yetli Rosas-Guevara, Richard G. Bower, Joop Schaye, Michelle Furlong, Carlos S. Frenk, C. Booth, Robert A. Crain, Claudio Dalla Vecchia, Matthieu Schaller, T. T. I. F. C. Cosmology and 15 more. 2013

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Feedback from energy liberated by gas accretion onto black holes (BHs) is an attractive mechanism to explain the exponential cut-off at the massive end of the galaxy stellar mass function (SMF). Semi-analytic models of galaxy formation in which this form of feedback is assumed to suppress cooling in haloes where the gas cooling time is large compared to the dynamical time do indeed achieve a good match to the observed SMF. Furthermore, hydrodynamic simulations of individual halos in which gas is assumed to accrete onto the central BH at the Bondi rate have shown that a self-regulating regime is established in which the BH grows just enough to liberate an amount of energy comparable to the thermal energy of the halo. However, this process is efficient at suppressing the growth not only of massive galaxies but also of galaxies like the Milky Way, leading to disagreement with the observed SMF. The Bondi accretion rate, however, is inappropriate when the accreting material has angular momentum. We present an improved accretion model that takes into account the circularisation and subsequent viscous transport of infalling material and include it as a "subgrid" model in hydrodynamic simulations of the evolution of halos with a wide range of masses. The resulting accretion rates are generally low in low mass ($\lsim 10^{11.5} \msun$) halos, but show outbursts of Eddington-limited accretion during galaxy mergers. During outbursts these objects strongly resemble quasars. In higher mass haloes, gas accretion occurs continuously, typically at $~10$ % of the Eddington rate, which is conducive to the formation of radio jets. The resulting dependence of the accretion behaviour on halo mass induces a break in the relation between galaxy stellar mass and halo mass in these simulations that matches observations.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/10c595d2e8745cb73debb3378ecd8dfcccd9246a

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Citations in the corpus

Theoretical Challenges in Galaxy Formation (2016, background): “Also Schaye et al. (2015) have eliminated the boost factor and regulate the Bondi rate with the ratio of the Bondi to viscous time-scale (Rosas-Guevara et al. 2015).”
Gravitational torque-driven black hole growth and feedback in cosmological simulations (2016, background): “…Di Matteo, Springel & Hernquist 2005; Hopkins et al. 2005, 2006, 2007a; Springel, Di Matteo & Hernquist 2005; Sijacki et al. 2007, 2015; Booth & Schaye 2009; Filloux et al. 2010; Choi et al. 2012; Debuhr, Quataert & Ma 2012; Dubois et al. 2012; Rosas-Guevara et al. 2015; Steinborn et al. 2015).”
The quest for dual and binary supermassive black holes: A multi-messenger view (2019, background): “tent (Rosas-Guevara et al., 2015; Tremmel et al., 2017), or on the gas temperature (Steinborn et al.”
The Romulus cosmological simulations: a physical approach to the formation, dynamics and accretion models of SMBHs (2016, methodology): “The simulations are run assuming a ΛCDM cosmology following the most recent results from Planck (Ω0 = 0.3086, Λ = 0.6914, h= 0.67, σ8 = 0.77; Planck Collaboration et al. 2015) and at the same resolution, with a Plummer equivalent force softening of 250 pc. Unlike many similar cosmological runs, the ”
The dark nemesis of galaxy formation : why hot haloes trigger black hole growth and bring star formation to an end (2016, methodology): “…model that accounts for the mean density, effective sound speed and relative motion and angular momentum of the surrounding gas as detailed in Rosas-Guevara et al. (2015) (with the exception that, in the EAGLE simulations, we do not increase the accretion rate to account for an unresolved…”
Simulating galaxy formation with black hole driven thermal and kinetic feedback (2016, unknown): “…2010, 2011; Anglés-Alcázar et al. 2013; Gaspari et al. 2013; Anglés-Alcázar et al. 2015, 2016; Curtis & Sijacki 2015, 2016; Emsellem et al. 2015; Rosas-Guevara et al. 2015) and the AGN-gas interaction (Huarte-Espinosa et al. 2011; Gaibler et al. 2012; Cielo et al. 2014; Costa et al. 2014;…”
The eagle simulations of galaxy formation: Public release of halo and galaxy catalogues (2015, methodology): “4 from Schaye et al. (2015) comparing the galaxy stellar mass function at z = 0.”
The APOSTLE simulations: solutions to the Local Group's cosmic puzzles (2015, background): “It also includes black hole growth fuelled by gas accretion and mergers, and feedback from active galactic nuclei(AGN; Booth & Schaye 2009; Rosas-Guevara et al. 2015).”
The formation and assembly history of the Milky Way revealed by its globular cluster population (2018, background): “…(Dalla Vecchia & Schaye 2012), metal enrichment (Wiersma et al. 2009b), the growth of supermassive black holes by gas accretion and merging (Springel et al. 2005; Rosas-Guevara et al. 2015; Schaye et al. 2015), and feedback from active galactic nuclei (Booth & Schaye 2009; Schaye et al. 2015).”