Stellar and Quasar Feedback in Concert: Effects on AGN Accretion, Obscuration, and Outflows

By P. Hopkins, P. Torrey, C. Faucher-Giguére, E. Quataert, N. Murray. 2015

147 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We study the interaction of feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN) and a multiphase interstellar medium (ISM), in simulations including explicit stellar feedback, multiphase cooling, accretion-disc winds, and Compton heating. We examine radii ∼0.1–100 pc around a black hole (BH), where the accretion rate on to the BH is determined and where AGN-powered winds and radiation couple to the ISM. We conclude: (1) the BH accretion rate is determined by exchange of angular momentum between gas and stars in gravitational instabilities. This produces accretion rates ∼0.03–1 M_⊙ yr^(−1), sufficient to power luminous AGN. (2) The gas disc in the galactic nucleus undergoes an initial burst of star formation followed by several million years where stellar feedback suppresses the star formation rate (SFR). (3) AGN winds injected at small radii with momentum fluxes ∼L_(AGN)/c couple efficiently to the ISM and have dramatic effects on ISM properties within ∼100 pc. AGN winds suppress the nuclear SFR by factors ∼10–30 and BH accretion rate by factors ∼3–30. They increase the outflow rate from the nucleus by factors ∼10, consistent with observational evidence for galaxy-scale AGN-driven outflows. (4) With AGN feedback, the predicted column density distribution to the BH is consistent with observations. Absent AGN feedback, the BH is isotropically obscured and there are not enough optically thin sightlines to explain type-I AGN. A ‘torus-like’ geometry arises self-consistently as AGN feedback evacuates gas in polar regions.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8eef4e9b27d27329425c72012b904549b9e7ece9

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Citations in the corpus

Black holes on FIRE: stellar feedback limits early feeding of galactic nuclei (2017, methodology): “We build on results from nuclear-scale simulations (Hopkins & Quataert 2010, 2011; Hopkins et al. 2016) to estimate the feeding rate of the BH accretion disc based on resolved galaxy properties on scales 100 pc. Crucially, we model the inflow rate driven by gravitational torques induced by…”
Theoretical Challenges in Galaxy Formation (2016, background): “…surrounding gas and vrel is the relative velocity of the black hole and the gas (see Rosas-Guevara et al. (2015) for modifications of the Bondi rate due to an assumed viscous accretion disk, see also Hopkins et al. (2016) for the possible failure of Bondi accretion in high-resolution simulations).”
Cool outflows in galaxies and their implications (2020, background): “This number is not well constrained from numerical simulations, although values of 0.5%–1% seem to be required if AGN feedback is to suppress star formation in the host (e.g., Hopkins and Elvis 2010; Hopkins et al. 2016).”
Gravitational torque-driven black hole growth and feedback in cosmological simulations (2016, methodology): “This model captures the key scalings governing angular momentum transport from galactic scales down to parsec scales and reproduces the average gas inflow rates found in idealized nuclear scale simulations (Hopkins & Quataert 2010; Hopkins et al. 2016).”
Relativistic jet feedback in high-redshift galaxies – I. Dynamics (2016, background): “However, only a few papers have addressed the complex nature of the interaction of such winds with a dense multiphase interstellar medium (ISM; see for example Hopkins & Elvis 2010; Gabor & Bournaud 2014; Hopkins et al. 2016).”
Simulating galaxy formation with black hole driven thermal and kinetic feedback (2016, background): “…the AGN-gas interaction (Huarte-Espinosa et al. 2011; Gaibler et al. 2012; Cielo et al. 2014; Costa et al. 2014; Roos et al. 2015; Bieri et al. 2016; Hopkins et al. 2016) are poorly understood, which makes it at present impossible to formulate a ‘correct’ treatment for simulations, independent…”