Active galactic nuclei flicker: an observational estimate of the duration of black hole growth phases of ∼105 yr

By Kevin Schawinski, M. Koss, S. Berney, L. Sartori. 2015

279 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present an observational constraint for the typical active galactic nucleus (AGN) phase lifetime. The argument is based on the time lag between an AGN central engine switching on and becoming visible in X-rays, and the time the AGN then requires to photoionize a large fraction of the host galaxy. Based on the typical light travel time across massive galaxies, and the observed fraction of X-ray selected AGN without AGN-photoionized narrow lines, we estimate that the AGN phase typically lasts 10 5 years. This lifetime is short compared to the total growth time of 10 7 10 9 years estimated from e.g. the Soltan argument and implies

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8882f14aecb7f50b55d4a599c4647384784a85c7

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 Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Citations in the corpus

Now You See It, Now You Don't: The Disappearing Central Engine of the Quasar J1011+5442 (2015, methodology): “…found in simulations, such as those of Novak et al. (2011), where the accretion rate onto the black hole is intermittent because of the interaction of the quasar outflow with the gas supplied by stellar processes (see also the related discussion by Schawinski et al. 2015 and Merloni et al. 2015).”
BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey. V. X-Ray Properties of the Swift/BAT 70-month AGN Catalog (2017, background): “…et al. 2010; Teng et al. 2011) studies, as well as works focussed on the host galaxy properties (e.g., Koss et al. 2011a), variability (e.g., Shimizu & Mushotzky 2013; Soldi et al. 2014) and on peculiar sources (e.g., Koss et al. 2012; Hogg et al. 2012; Smith et al. 2014; Schawinski et al. 2015).”
Cold Molecular Outflows in the Local Universe and Their Feedback Effect on Galaxies (2018, background): “…only with η ∼ 1); (2) the fact that the outflow has much longer time-scale (>106 yr) than the AGN accretion variability (∼10–105 yr) (Gilli et al. 2000; Schawinski et al. 2015), hence the MNRAS 483, 4586–4614 (2019) D ow nloaded from https://academ ic.oup.com /m nras/article/483/4/4586/5253620…”
Relativistic jet feedback – III. Feedback on gas discs (2018, background): “E-mail: dipanjan.mukherjee@unito.it how the central AGN affects the gas in the galaxy, and over what time scales (Schawinski et al. 2009, 2015).”
Constraining Stellar-mass Black Hole Mergers in AGN Disks Detectable with LIGO (2017, background): “Reasonable estimates of τAGN span 0.1–100Myr (Haehnelt & Rees 1993; King & Nixon 2015; Schawinski et al. 2015). will be highest if AGN episodes are short lived but frequently repeated and efficient at BH mergers.”
Active galactic nuclei: what’s in a name? (2017, methodology): “23) as evidenced by hydrodynamic simulations (e.g. Novak et al. 2011) and AGN light echoes (Keel et al. 2012; Schawinski et al. 2015) that point toward large-amplitude fluctuations in AGN luminosity on timescales of ∼105–106 years.”