THE NON-CAUSAL ORIGIN OF THE BLACK-HOLE–GALAXY SCALING RELATIONS

By K. Jahnke, A. Macciò. 2010

272 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We show that the MBH–Mbulge scaling relations observed from the local to the high-z universe can be largely or even entirely explained by a non-causal origin, i.e., they do not imply the need for any physically coupled growth of black hole (BH) and bulge mass, for example, through feedback by active galactic nuclei (AGNs). Provided some physics for the absolute normalization, the creation of the scaling relations can be fully explained by the hierarchical assembly of BH and stellar mass through galaxy merging, from an initially uncorrelated distribution of BH and stellar masses in the early universe. We show this with a suite of dark matter halo merger trees for which we make assumptions about (uncorrelated) BH and stellar mass values at early cosmic times. We then follow the halos in the presence of global star formation and BH accretion recipes that (1) work without any coupling of the two properties per individual galaxy and (2) correctly reproduce the observed star formation and BH accretion rate density in the universe. With disk-to-bulge conversion in mergers included, our simulations even create the observed slope of ∼1.1 for the MBH–Mbulge relation at z = 0. This also implies that AGN feedback is not a required (though still a possible) ingredient in galaxy evolution. In light of this, other mechanisms that can be invoked to truncate star formation in massive galaxies are equally justified.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/23137047b8ef3502504b42eff122c7e9a6b83550

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Citations in the corpus

The ATLAS3D project – XX. Mass–size and mass–σ distributions of early-type galaxies: bulge fraction drives kinematics, mass-to-light ratio, molecular gas fraction and stellar initial mass function (2012, background): “…believed that the correlations indicate a joint evolution of galaxies and BHs, with BH growth happening at the same time as the bulge growth, and providing a self-regulation via feedback (Silk & Rees 1998; but see Peng 2007 and Jahnke & Macciò 2011 for a non-causal origin of the correlations).”
Supermassive black holes and their feedback effects in the IllustrisTNG simulation (2017, background): “It has been shown (Peng 2007; Jahnke & Macciò 2011) that hierarchical merging of galaxies and their SMBHs naturally causes a correlation close to the observed black hole mass–stellar mass relation, so this “dry merging” of massive black holes tends to maintain the (already established) relation.”
Selection bias in dynamically measured supermassive black hole samples: its consequences and the quest for the most fundamental relation (2016, methodology): “Scatter in the black-hole galaxy scaling relations is thought to bear imprints of the amount of collisionless “dry mergers” experienced by the (most massive) hosts (e.g., Boylan-Kolchin et al. 2006; Peng 2007; Hirschmann et al. 2010; Jahnke & Macciò 2011, but see Savorgnan & Graham 2015a).”
Gravitational torque-driven black hole growth and feedback in cosmological simulations (2016, background): “Merging of galaxies and central black holes may help reduce the scatter of the scaling relations (Peng 2007; Hirschmann et al. 2010; Jahnke & Macciò 2011) but we find that it is not a significant contribution (Anglés-Alcázar et al. 2015).”
The Illustris simulation: the evolving population of black holes across cosmic time (2014, background): “…itself but also the properties of their host galaxy; ii) for higher black hole masses more galaxy-galaxy dry mergers and thus black hole – black hole mergers happen and due to the central limit theorem (Peng 2007; Hirschmann et al. 2010; Jahnke & Macciò 2011), the scatter in MBH - Mbulge tightens.”
AGN wind scaling relations and the co-evolution of black holes and galaxies (2017, background): “Jahnke & Macció (2011) showed that the number of mergers needed to this purpose is consistent with that of standard merger tree models of hierarchical galaxy (and SMBH) formation.”
THE MBH–LSPHEROID RELATION AT HIGH AND LOW MASSES, THE QUADRATIC GROWTH OF BLACK HOLES, AND INTERMEDIATE-MASS BLACK HOLE CANDIDATES (2012, methodology): “L diagram, for the reason described by Peng (2007) and Jahnke & Maccio (2011).”
THE M87 BLACK HOLE MASS FROM GAS-DYNAMICAL MODELS OF SPACE TELESCOPE IMAGING SPECTROGRAPH OBSERVATIONS (2013, background): “For example, the relations may simply be the result of random mergers without the need for additional physical processes like active galactic nuclei (AGN) feedback (Peng 2007; Jahnke & Macciò 2011).”
Morphologies of z ∼ 0.7 AGN host galaxies in CANDELS: no trend of merger incidence with AGN luminosity (2014, background): “Although some authors have pointed out that repeated mergers of galaxies containing black hole seeds explain the correlations as well (Peng 2007; Jahnke & Maccio 2011; Anglés-Alcázar et al. 2013).”
What drives the growth of black holes (2011, background): “…deal of attention in understanding BH-spheroid relationships, recent work has also proposed that these relations do not imply a causal link between BHs and their host galaxies or halos, but are simply a consequence of the hierarchical growth of structure (e.g., Peng, 2007; Jahnke & Macciò, 2011).”
Black holes on FIRE: stellar feedback limits early feeding of galactic nuclei (2017, background): “…Graham 2016; Savorgnan et al. 2016) have been interpreted as (1) a non-causal consequence of hierarchical merging (Peng 2007; Hirschmann et al. 2010; Jahnke & Macciò 2011), (2) the causal signature of self-regulation by BH feedback (e.g. Silk & Rees 1998; Di Matteo, Springel & Hernquist 2005;…”
Cosmological simulations of black hole growth: AGN luminosities and downsizing (2013, unknown): “…2014 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article-abstract/442/3/2304/1039443 by guest on 29 July 2018 statistical merging processes (Peng 2007; Hirschmann et al. 2010; Jahnke & Macciò 2011).”
PRIMUS: THE DEPENDENCE OF AGN ACCRETION ON HOST STELLAR MASS AND COLOR (2011, background): “…Tremaine et al. 2002) of the stellar bulge, indicating that the growth of the SMBH and the processes that build up the stellar mass of the host galaxy must be related, although it is unclear whether a causal connection between these processes is required (see Peng 2007; Jahnke & Macciò 2011).”
REVISITING THE SCALING RELATIONS OF BLACK HOLE MASSES AND HOST GALAXY PROPERTIES (2012, methodology): “More recent models by Jahnke & Macciò (2011) use fully decoupled prescriptions for star formation and black hole growth, and attain a more realistic amount of scatter on average.”
Powerful Outflows and Feedback from Active Galactic Nuclei (2015, background): “6.3 Mergers and the M −Mb relation Jahnke & Macciò (2011) offer a radically different interpretation of the M − Mb relation.”