FEEDBACK FROM CENTRAL BLACK HOLES IN ELLIPTICAL GALAXIES. III. MODELS WITH BOTH RADIATIVE AND MECHANICAL FEEDBACK

By Luca Ciotti, Jeremiah P. Ostriker, D. Proga. 2010

192 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We find, from high-resolution hydro simulations, that winds from active galactic nuclei effectively heat the inner parts (≈100 pc) of elliptical galaxies, reducing infall to the central black hole; and radiative (photoionization and X-ray) heating reduces cooling flows at the kpc scale. Including both types of feedback with (peak) efficiencies of 3 × 10−4 ≲  ϵw ≲ 10−3 and of ϵEM ≃ 10−1.3 respectively, produces systems having duty cycles, central black hole masses, X-ray luminosities, optical light profiles, and E+A spectra in accord with the broad suite of modern observations of massive elliptical systems. Our main conclusion is that mechanical feedback (including energy, momentum, and mass) is necessary but the efficiency, based on several independent arguments, must be a factor of 10 lower than is commonly assumed. Bursts are frequent at z > 1 and decline in frequency toward the present epoch as energy and metal-rich gas are expelled from the galaxies into the surrounding medium. For a representative galaxy of final stellar mass ≃3 × 1011 M☉, roughly 3 × 1010 M☉ of recycled gas has been added to the interstellar medium (ISM) since z ≃ 2 and, of that, roughly 63% has been expelled from the galaxy, 19% has been converted into new metal-rich stars in the central few hundred parsecs, and 2% has been added to the central supermassive black hole (SMBH), with the remaining 16% in the form of hot X-ray emitting ISM. The bursts occupy a total time of ≃170 Myr, which is roughly 1.4% of the available time. Of this time, the central supermassive black hole would be seen as a UV or optical source for ≃45% and ≃71% of the time, respectively. Restricting to the last 8.5 Gyr, the bursts occupy ≃44 Myr, corresponding to a fiducial duty cycle of ≃5 × 10−3.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/52296a84e77fd7a63c06763958d3b6a9e06bd65b

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. D. M. Alexander
2. L. Hernquist
3. P. Hopkins
4. Volker Springel
5. R. Dav'e
6. R. Somerville
7. E. Daddi
8. Shy Genel

In Instrumentation

1. L. Hernquist
2. D. M. Alexander
3. P. Hopkins
4. R. Dav'e
5. Volker Springel
6. Shy Genel
7. E. Daddi
8. A. Renzini

Citations in the corpus

• Enhanced star formation rates in AGN hosts with respect to inactive galaxies from PEP-Herschel observations (2012, background): “These mechanisms include minor mergers, disk instabilities and bars, supernova explosions or the infall of recycled gas returned to the interstellar medium (e.g. Wada 2004; Martini 2004; Jogee 2006; Genzel et al. 2008; Dekel et al. 2009; Johansson et al. 2009; Ciotti et al. 2010).”
• Faint high-redshift AGN in the Chandra deep field south: the evolution of the AGN luminosity function and black hole demography (2011, background): “…scenarios for AGN triggering and feeding have been investigated to date: galaxy encounters (Barnes & Hernquist 1996; Cavaliere & Vittorini 2000; Menci et al. 2006, 2008) and recycled gas produced by normal stellar evolution in the inner bulge (Ciotti & Ostriker 2007; Ciotti et al. 2010; Cen 2011).”
• Simulating galaxy formation with black hole driven thermal and kinetic feedback (2016, background): “…& Gibson 2005; Sijacki et al. 2007; Di Matteo et al. 2008; Hopkins et al. 2008a,b; Okamoto et al. 2008; Somerville 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;…”
• The Coevolution of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes: Insights from Surveys of the Contemporary Universe (2014, background): “…from AGN is currently invoked in both semi-analytic models and numerical simulations in order to successfully reproduce the observed properties of massive galaxies (e.g. Di Matteo et al. 2005, Springel et al. 2005, Bower et al. 2006, Croton et al. 2006, Hopkins et al. 2006, Ciotti et al. 2010).”
• A GLOBAL THREE-DIMENSIONAL RADIATION MAGNETO-HYDRODYNAMIC SIMULATION OF SUPER-EDDINGTON ACCRETION DISKS (2014, background): “Such feedback may play a critical role on the growth of black holes in the early universe and the evolution of the host galaxies (Ciotti & Ostriker 2007; Ciotti et al. 2010; Choi et al. 2012).”
• Tracing the cosmic growth of supermassive black holes to z ∼ 3 with Herschel (2014, background): “…processes (Kormendy & Kennicutt 2004), which in turn include internal secular evolution (i.e. large-scale disc instabilities and bars) and external secular evolution (galaxy interactions) and inflow of recycled cold gas from old stellar populations (Ciotti & Ostriker 2007; Ciotti et al. 2010).”
• Quasar outflows and AGN feedback in the extreme UV: HST/COS observations of HE 0238−1904 (2013, background): “The energy, mass, and momentum carried by these outflows are thought to play an important role in shaping the early universe and dictating its evolution (e.g. Scannapieco & Oh 2004; Levine & Gnedin 2005; Hopkins et al. 2006; Cattaneo et al. 2009; Ciotti et al. 2009, 2010; Ostriker et al. 2010).”
• Impact of supermassive black hole growth on star formation (2017, background): “However, recently simulations have incorporated more complex prescriptions for “feeback” by invoking and testing multiple modes of energy injection[7, 25, 20].”