Timing the starburst–AGN connection

By V. Wild, T. Heckman, Stephane Charlot Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, J. University. 2010

215 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The mass of supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies is tightly correlated with the mass of the galaxy bulges which host them. This observed correlation implies a mechanism of joint growth, but the precise physical processes responsible are a matter of some debate. Here, we report on the growth of black holes in 400 local galactic bulges which have experienced a strong burst of star formation in the past 600 Myr. The black holes in our sample have typical masses of 10 6.5 -10 7.5 M ⊙ and the active nuclei have bolometric luminosities of the order of 10 42 -10 44 erg s -1 . We combine stellar continuum indices with Hα luminosities to measure a decay time-scale of ~300 Myr for the decline in star formation after a starburst. During the first 600 Myr after a starburst, the black holes in our sample increase their mass by on-average 5 per cent and the total mass of stars formed is about 10 3 times the total mass accreted on to the black hole. This ratio is similar to the ratio of stellar to black hole mass observed in present-day bulges. We find that the average rate of accretion of matter on to the black hole rises steeply roughly 250 Myr after the onset of the starburst. We show that our results are consistent with a simple model in which 0.5 per cent of the mass lost by intermediate-mass stars in the bulge is accreted by the black hole, but with a suppression in the efficiency of black hole growth at early times plausibly caused by supernova feedback, which is stronger at earlier times. We suggest this picture may be more generally applicable to black hole growth, and could help explain the strong correlation between bulge and black hole mass.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/286e668320e25f3f28fffe0daf6b2dc37b32d0d8

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Instrumentation

Citations in the corpus

Morphologies of z ∼ 0.7 AGN host galaxies in CANDELS: no trend of merger incidence with AGN luminosity (2014, background): “Theoretical models generally predict a delay of about 100 Myr between coalescence and the peak quasar activity (see e.g. Di Matteo et al. 2005; Hopkins et al. 2008), which is a time-scale on which merger signatures should stay very apparent (Lotz et al. 2010a,b).”
Galaxy pairs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey – VIII. The observational properties of post-merger galaxies (2013, methodology): “More recent tests by Wild et al. (2010) imply AGN contributions of close to unity, indicating that although the Kewley et al. (2001) was not necessarily designed as a ‘pure AGN’ line (e.g. see the discussion in Stasinska et al. 2006), it is effective at isolating galaxies with minimal contamination…”
Adaptive Optics for Astronomy (2012, methodology): “A possible solution to this puzzle was proposed by (Davies et al. 2007, see also Wild et al. 2010).”
The Coevolution of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes: Insights from Surveys of the Contemporary Universe (2014, methodology): “In a subsequent paper, Wild et al. (2010) examined the time history of SMBH growth during and after an intense burst of central star formation (involving roughly 10% of the galaxy stellar mass).”
The Illustris simulation: the evolving population of black holes across cosmic time (2014, background): “Gas-rich major mergers are responsible for the starburst – AGN connection but relative timing offsets (see also Wild et al. 2010), whereby luminous quasars light-up with a delay, contribute to the scatter.”
On the fundamental dichotomy in the local radio-AGN population (2012, background): “They are often associated with star-formation activity in the host galaxies (e.g. Kauffmann et al. 2003a), although possibly with delays between the star formation and the AGN activity (e.g. Wild et al. 2010; Tadhunter et al. 2011, and references therein).”
Galaxy pairs in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey - IV: Interactions trigger AGN (2011, background): “Delays of a few hundred million years (Wild et al. 2010; Hopkins 2011) between peaks in star formation and accretion rate correspond to changes in projected separation of order the bin width in our projected separation figures (depending on relative velocity and the orientation).”
What drives the growth of black holes (2011, background): “Furthermore, given the gas-inflow times, there can be a significant delay between the initial triggering event and the onset of AGN activity (≈ 50–500 Myrs; e.g., Davies et al. 2007; Schawinski et al. 2009; Wild et al. 2010); see §2.1–2.2.”
Constraining the properties of AGN host galaxies with spectral energy distribution modelling (2015, background): “…that black hole accretion preferentially occurs few hundred to few thousand million years after the peak of star-formation (Kauffmann et al. 2003a; Wild et al. 2010; Hernán-Caballero et al. 2014), i.e. during a period when galaxies can be identified as post-starbursts (e.g. Goto 2006;…”
The mean star formation rate of X-ray selected active galaxies and its evolution from z~2.5: results from PEP-Herschel (2012, background): “Post-starburst spectroscopic signatures are also found to be strong in AGN hosts (Wild et al. 2007), while there is evidence in some AGNs that nuclear activity follows a few 100 Myr after a strong starburst (Davies et al. 2007; Wild et al. 2010).”
CANDELS: CONSTRAINING THE AGN–MERGER CONNECTION WITH HOST MORPHOLOGIES AT z ∼ 2 (2011, background): “Hydrodynamic simulations of SMBH growth in galaxy mergers do predict such a delay (Hopkins et al. 2006b), and there is observational evidence for a delay of the order of ∼250 Myr between starburst and AGN activity (Wild et al. 2010).”