Grand unification of AGN activity in the ΛCDM cosmology

By N. Fanidakis, C. Baugh, A. J. Benson, Richard G. Bower, Shaun Cole, C. Done, Carlos S. Frenk. 2009

214 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We track the coevolution of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and their host galaxies through cosmic time. The calculation is embedded in the GALFORM semi-analytic model which simulates the formation and evolution of galaxies in a cold dark matter (CDM) universe. The black hole (BH) and galaxy formation models are coupled: during the evolution of the host galaxy, hot and cold gas are added to the SMBH by flows triggered by halo gas cooling, disc instabilities and galaxy mergers. This builds up the mass and spin of the BH, and the resulting accretion power regulates gas cooling and subsequent star formation. The accretion flow is assumed to form a geometrically thin cool disc when the accretion rate exceeds Graphic, and a geometrically thick, radiatively inefficient hot flow when the accretion rate falls below this value. The resulting quasar optical luminosity function matches observations well, and the mass of the SMBH correlates with the mass of the galaxy bulge as in the observed Mbh–Mbulge relation. The BH spin distribution depends strongly on whether we assume that the gas in any given accretion episode remains in the same plane or it fragments into multiple, randomly aligned accretion episodes due to its self-gravity. We refer to these cases as the ‘prolonged’ and ‘chaotic’ accretion modes, respectively. In the chaotic accretion model there is a clear correlation of spin with SMBH mass (and hence host galaxy bulge mass). Massive BHs (M > 5 × 108 M⊙) are hosted by giant elliptical galaxies and are rapidly spinning, while lower mass BHs are hosted in spiral galaxies and have much lower spin. Using the Blandford–Znajek mechanism for jet production to calculate the jet power, our model reproduces the radio loudness of radio galaxies, low ionization emission regions (LINERS) and Seyferts, suggesting that the jet properties of active galaxy nuclei (AGN) are a natural consequence of both the accretion rate on to and the spin of the central SMBH. This is the first confirmation that a CDM galaxy formation model can reproduce the observed radio phenomenology of AGN.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7cf60923f36aa7e60846f5d5dd2c3f354b8169d9

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Citations in the corpus

THE FINAL SPIN FROM BINARY BLACK HOLES IN QUASI-CIRCULAR ORBITS (2016, methodology): “…used both in the production of semi-analytical waveforms (e.g., in sEOB and phenomenological waveforms) and in cosmological studies of massive BH evolution (see, e.g., Berti & Volonteri 2008; Fanidakis et al. 2011; Barausse 2012; Volonteri et al. 2013; Dubois et al. 2014; Sesana et al. 2014).”
Active galactic nuclei: what’s in a name? (2017, background): “7.1.1), thus the sampling of longer timescales also allows detection of variability over a wider range of MBH and L/LEdd.”
Selection bias in dynamically measured supermassive black hole samples: its consequences and the quest for the most fundamental relation (2016, background): “…black hole growth over cosmic time, such as mergers or disc instabilities (e.g., Kauffmann & Haehnelt 2000; Vittorini et al. 2005; Bower et al. 2006; Fontanot et al. 2006; Lapi et al. 2006; Menci et al. 2006; Malbon et al. 2007; Shankar et al. 2009b; Bournaud et al. 2011; Fanidakis et al. 2011; ?”
A unified multiwavelength model of galaxy formation (2015, background): “In GALFORM, SMBHs grow in three ways (Malbon et al. 2007; Bower et al. 2006; Fanidakis et al. 2011): (i) accretion of gas during starbursts triggered by galaxy mergers or disk instabilities (starburst mode); (ii) accretion of gas from the hot halo (hot halo mode); (iii) BH-BH mergers.”
The current status of galaxy formation (2012, background): “Refinements to high redshift attempted to account simultaneously for galaxy and AGN accounts, and only succeeded by requiring excessive amounts of dust in order to hide most of the AGNs seen in deep X-ray surveys (Fanidakis et al., 2011).”
THE RADIATIVE EFFICIENCY OF ACCRETION FLOWS IN INDIVIDUAL ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2010, methodology): “The prolonged accretion model of Fanidakis et al. (2009) yields a much different distribution, with a∗ ∼ 1 for M .”
Physical Models of Galaxy Formation in a Cosmological Framework (2014, background): “Some models allow an additional growth channel through a “Bondi-like” accretion from the hot halo (Fanidakis et al. 2011, Somerville et al. 2008).”
Supermassive black holes and their feedback effects in the IllustrisTNG simulation (2017, result): “The trend that mergers become more important for the mass growth of SMBHs is in qualitative agreement with other work (Fanidakis et al. 2011; Dubois et al. 2014a), however, it is significantly more pronounced in IllustrisTNG.”