Cosmological simulations of black hole growth: AGN luminosities and downsizing

By M. Hirschmann, Klaus Dolag, A. Saro, L. Bachmann, Stefano Borgani, A. Burkert. 2013

278 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In this study, we present a detailed, statistical analysis of black hole growth and the evolution of active galactic nuclei (AGN) using cosmological hydrodynamic simulations run down to z = 0. The simulations self-consistently follow radiative cooling, star formation, metal enrichment, black hole growth and associated feedback processes from both supernovae typeII/Ia and AGN. We consider two simulation runs, one with a large co-moving volume of (128 Mpc/h) 3 and one with a smaller volume of (48 Mpc/h) 3 but with a by a factor of almost 20 higher mass resolution. We compare the predicted statistical properties of AGN with results from large observational surveys. Consistently with previous results, our simulations are in reasonably good agreement with black hole properties of the local Universe. Furthermore, our simulations can successfully reproduce the evolution of the bolometric AGN luminosity function for both the low-luminosity and the high-luminosity end up to z = 2.5. In particular, the latter is for the first time accessible thanks to the large simulated volume in our larger run. In addition, the smaller but higher resolution run is able to match the observational data of the low bolometric luminosity end up to z = 4 5. We also perform a direct comparison with the observed soft and hard X-ray luminosity functions of AGN, including an empirical correction for a torus-level obscuration, and find a similarly good agreement. These results show that our simulations can self-consistently predict the observed “downsizing” trend in the AGN number density evolution, i.e. the number densities of luminous AGN peak at higher redshifts than those of faint AGN. Implications of the downsizing behaviour on active black holes, their masses and Eddington-ratios are discussed. Overall, the downsizing behaviour in the AGN number density as a function of redshift can be attributed to a combination of the gas density evolution in the resolved vicinity of a (massive) black hole (which is depleted with evolving time mainly as a consequence of the radio-mode feedback) and to the decreasing mean relative velocities between the (low mass) black holes and the surrounding gas with decreasing redshift.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1eb65b6ff863d4c932ffc268c3c00d58a8a91866

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. L. Hernquist
2. Volker Springel
3. P. Hopkins
4. M. Vogelsberger
5. R. Dav'e
6. T. Naab
7. P. Torrey
8. Shy Genel

Citations in the corpus

• Selection bias in dynamically measured supermassive black hole samples: its consequences and the quest for the most fundamental relation (2016, background): “; Dubois et al. 2013; Hirschmann et al. 2014; Sesana et al. 2014; Aversa et al. 2015; Fontanot et al. 2015; Sijacki et al. 2015), as well as on the average radiative efficiencies/black hole spin and/or fraction of obscured sources (e.g., Soltan 1982; Elvis et al. 2002; Shankar et al. 2013b; Aversa…”
• Titans of the early Universe: The Prato statement on the origin of the first supermassive black holes (2018, background): “Past simulations have simply deposited this luminosity locally as heat (e.g., Di Matteo et al. 2012; Feng et al. 2014; Costa et al. 2014; Hirschmann et al. 2014) but the newest models now perform multi-frequency radiation transport from the black hole (Aykutalp et al. 2014; Smidt, Wiggins, &…”
• Cosmic X-ray surveys of distant active galaxies (2015, background): “Some furthermore quantitatively predict a decline in average Eddington ratio with redshift (e.g., Fanidakis et al 2012; Hirschmann et al 2012, 2014).”
• Simulating galaxy formation with black hole driven thermal and kinetic feedback (2016, background): “…et al. 2008; Booth & Schaye 2009; Ciotti et al. 2010; Debuhr et al. 2010; Teyssier et al. 2011; Dubois et al. 2012; RosasGuevara et al. 2015; Hirschmann et al. 2014; Choi et al. 2014; Khandai et al. 2015; Somerville & Davé 2015; Steinborn et al. 2015; Trayford et al. 2016, among others)…”
• Theoretical Challenges in Galaxy Formation (2016, background): “For lower accretion rates the feedback efficiency is increased from 0.5% to 2% of the rest mass energy and is injected into heated off-center bubbles that can then buoyantly rise (see Fabjan et al. (2010), Hirschmann et al. (2014), and Vogelsberger et al. (2014) for slightly modified versions).”
• EMERGE – an empirical model for the formation of galaxies since z ∼ 10 (2017, background): “In hydrodynamical simulations the baryonic component is discretised and evolved hydrodynamically (Hirschmann et al. 2014; Vogelsberger et al. 2014; Dubois et al. 2014; Hopkins et al. 2014; Khandai et al. 2015; Schaye et al. 2015), while in semi-analytic models (SAMs) it is separated from the…”
• Supermassive black holes and their feedback effects in the IllustrisTNG simulation (2017, methodology): “We calculate the bolometric luminosity as L = εr Ṁc 2 for Ṁ ≥ 0.1ṀEdd,( 10 ṀṀEdd )2 0.1LEdd for Ṁ < 0.1ṀEdd, (12) assuming a decreasing radiative efficiency at low accretion rates relative to the Eddington limit (Churazov et al. 2005; Hirschmann et al. 2014).”
• The quest for dual and binary supermassive black holes: A multi-messenger view (2019, background): “tions between BHs and their host galaxies relatively well, including the relation between the BH mass M• and the stellar mass M∗ or the M•-σ relation (e.g. Sijacki et al., 2015; Hirschmann et al., 2014; Steinborn et al., 2015; Volonteri et al., 2016; Weinberger et al., 2018).”
• The Illustris simulation: the evolving population of black holes across cosmic time (2014, result): “These results were further confirmed by several independent groups and more recent simulations (Booth & Schaye 2009; Dubois et al. 2012; Hirschmann et al. 2014; Khandai et al. 2014; Schaye et al. 2014).”
• The cosmic evolution of massive black holes in the Horizon-AGN simulation (2016, background): “Many studies (Sijacki et al. 2007; Di Matteo et al. 2008; Booth & Schaye 2009; Dubois et al. 2010, 2012; Hirschmann et al. 2014; Sijacki et al. 2015) have shown that the inclusion of BHs as ‘sink particles’ that are allowed to accrete gas from their surroundings, and produce in turn energy, a…”
• The MassiveBlack-II simulation: The evolution of haloes and galaxies to z ~ 0 (2014, methodology): “This is also seen in the results of Hirschmann et al. (2014).”
• The Romulus cosmological simulations: a physical approach to the formation, dynamics and accretion models of SMBHs (2016, methodology): “Some important work has already been done to that end (Van Wassenhove et al. 2012; Hirschmann et al. 2014; Steinborn et al. 2016) and the methods presented in this paper represent the logical next step.”
• Constraints on the distribution and energetics of fast radio bursts using cosmological hydrodynamic simulations (2014, methodology): “This treatment is based on the model presented by Springel et al. (2005) and Di Matteo et al. (2005) including the same modifications as in the study of Fabjan et al. (2010) plus some further adaptations (see Hirschmann et al. 2014, for a detailed description).”
• CONNECTING ANGULAR MOMENTUM AND GALACTIC DYNAMICS: THE COMPLEX INTERPLAY BETWEEN SPIN, MASS, AND MORPHOLOGY (2015, methodology): “D Additionally, we introduced some technical modifications of the original implementation, for which readers can find details in Hirschmann et al. (2014), where we also demonstrate that the bulk properties of the AGN population within the simulation are similar to observed AGN properties.”
• Baryon impact on the halo mass function: Fitting formulae and implications for cluster cosmology (2015, methodology): “…in Appendix B. 2 See Equation 2 for the definition. c© 0000 RAS, MNRAS 000, 000–000 The Magneticum Hydro simulations have been shown to correctly reproduce AGN luminosity functions (Hirschmann et al. 2014) and cluster pressure profiles (Planck Collaboration et al. 2013; McDonald et al. 2014).”
• SEMI-ANALYTIC GALAXY EVOLUTION (SAGE): MODEL CALIBRATION AND BASIC RESULTS (2016, background): “Recent hydrodynamic works have started to use η = 0.2 instead (e.g. Hirschmann et al. 2014; Sijacki et al. 2015), motivated by observations of more-luminous AGN (Yu & Tremaine 2002; Davis & Laor 2011, anti-respectively). work by C06.”
• Active galactic nuclei: what’s in a name? (2017, background): “…is made particularly powerful in combination with large hydrodynamic or semi-analytic simulations of galaxy formation (for just a few examples, see Hirschmann et al. 2014; Schaye et al. 2015; Dubois et al. 2016; Di Matteo et al. 2017), which provide realistic populations of galaxies that enable a…”
• simba: Cosmological simulations with black hole growth and feedback (2019, methodology): “Modern cosmological-scale simulations such as Illustris (Vogelsberger et al. 2014; Genel et al. 2014), Magneticum (Hirschmann et al. 2014), Horizon-AGN (Dubois et al. 2014; Volonteri et al. 2016; Kaviraj et al. 2017), Eagle (Schaye et al. 2015), MassiveBlack (Khandai et al. 2015), Blue Tides (Feng…”