The Feedback-regulated Growth of Black Holes and Bulges through Gas Accretion and Starbursts in Cluster Central Dominant Galaxies

By D. Rafferty, B. R. McNamara, P. Nulsen, M. Wise. 2006

427 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present an analysis of the growth of black holes through accretion and bulges through star formation in 33 galaxies at the centers of cooling flows. Most of these systems show evidence of cavities in the intracluster medium (ICM) inflated by radio jets emanating from their active galactic nuclei (AGNs). We present a new and extensive analysis of X-ray cavities in these systems. We find that AGNs are energetically able to balance radiative losses (cooling) from the ICM in more than half of our sample. We examine the relationship between cooling and star formation and find that the star formation rates are approaching or are comparable to X-ray and far-UV limits on the rates of gas condensation onto the central galaxy. The vast gulf between radiative losses and the sink of cooling material, which has been the primary objection to cooling flows, has narrowed significantly. Using the cavity (jet) powers, we place strong lower limits on the rate of growth of the central black holes, and we find that they are growing at an average rate of ~0.1 M☉ yr-1, with some systems growing as quickly as ~1 M☉ yr-1. We find a trend between bulge growth (star formation) and black hole growth that is approximately in accordance with the slope of the local (Magorrian) relation between black hole and bulge mass, but the scatter suggests that bulges and black holes do not necessarily grow in lockstep. Bondi accretion can power the low-luminosity sources, provided the nuclear gas density rises as ~r-1 to the Bondi radius, but is probably too feeble to fuel the most powerful outbursts.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c0b3cbf67696a733398ee61143978fc50e68ccbf

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

Citations in the corpus

A deeper X‐ray study of the core of the Perseus galaxy cluster: the power of sound waves and the distribution of metals and cosmic rays (2007, background): “The power associated with this process is large and comparable to that required to balance radiative cooling within the regions of 50–100 kpc where the radiative cooling times is 3–5 Gyr (Dunn & Fabian 2006; Rafferty et al. 2006).”
ON THE ORIGIN OF THE EXTENDED Hα FILAMENTS IN COOLING FLOW CLUSTERS (2010, background): “…the measured SFR in the BCG is consistently less than the spectroscopically determined X-ray cooling rate for the cluster by a factor of 3–10 (i.e., Rafferty et al. 2006; O’Dea et al. 2008), implying that not all of the cooling gas is turning into stars with a Salpeter (1955) initial mass…”
THE QUASAR OUTFLOW CONTRIBUTION TO AGN FEEDBACK: VLT MEASUREMENTS OF SDSS J0318-0600 (2009, methodology): “Rafferty et al. (2006) show that the power needed to inflate these bubbles is ∼1045 erg s−1, which is similar to the kinetic luminosity we measure in SDSS J0318−0600 of ∼(1–3) × 1045 erg s−1.”
Measuring the kinetic power of active galactic nuclei in the radio mode (2007, background): “…emerged from these studies: first, it appears that AGN are energetically able to balance radiative losses from the ICM in the majority of cases (Rafferty et al. 2006); second, at least in the case of a few nearby elliptical galaxies, there is an almost linear correlationbetween the jet power…”
Improved constraints on dark energy from Chandra X-ray observations of the largest relaxed galaxy clusters (2007, background): “2006; Rafferty et al. 2006) and/or ‘sloshing’ of the X-ray emitting gas within the central potentials (e.g. Churazov et al. 2003; Markevitch et al. 2003; Ascasibar & Markevitch 2006).”
A Cosmological Framework for the Co-Evolution of Quasars, Supermassive Black Holes, and Elliptical Galaxies. II. Formation of Red Ellipticals (2007, background): “They do not appear to be recently accreting/star-forming or ‘‘becoming’’ blue (but see Rafferty et al. 2006, who reach the opposite conclusion for BCGs with large cooling flows).”
A semi-analytic model for the co-evolution of galaxies, black holes and active galactic nuclei (2008, methodology): “Most of these radio sources do not have emission lines characteristic of classical optical or X-ray bright quasars (Best et al. 2005; Kauffmann, Heckman & Best 2008), and their accretion rates are believed to be a small fraction of the Eddington rate (Rafferty et al. 2006).”
On the prevalence of radio‐loud active galactic nuclei in brightest cluster galaxies: implications for AGN heating of cooling flows (2006, background): “Bı̂rzan et al. (2004) and Rafferty et al. (2006) showed that the mechanical luminosity also relates strongly to the X-ray luminosity of the system, suggesting that a full understanding of these systems will require consideration of more parameters than simply the radio luminosity.”
Chaotic cold accretion on to black holes (2013, background): “…Di Matteo, Springel & Hernquist 2005; Springel, Di Matteo & Hernquist 2005; Allen et al. 2006; Croton et al. 2006; Hopkins, Narayan & Hernquist 2006; Rafferty et al. 2006; Cattaneo & Teyssier 2007; Hardcastle, Evans & Croston 2007; Sijacki et al. 2007; McCarthy et al. 2008; Booth & Schaye 2009;…”
What is a cool-core cluster? a detailed analysis of the cores of the X-ray flux-limited HIFLUGCS cluster sample (2009, methodology): “We chose 7.7 Gyr, since it corresponds to the look back time of z = 1, a representative period over which a cluster has time to relax and form a cooling flow (Rafferty et al. 2006).”
Simulating the effect of active galactic nuclei feedback on the metal enrichment of galaxy clusters (2009, background): “Atz = 0, the resulting SFR is of about70M⊙yr−1 for both models, a value which is closer to, although still higher than the typical values of SFR observed in the BCGs of clusters of comparable mass. (e.g., Rafferty et al. 2006).”
THE STRUCTURE OF THE M87 JET: A TRANSITION FROM PARABOLIC TO CONICAL STREAMLINES (2011, background): “However,pjet of the inter-knot regions, as estimated by the minimum energy argument for the VLA data (Sparks et al. 1996), appears under-pressured with respect topism, as estimated by the recent X-ray observations (Young et al. 2002; Rafferty et al. 2006).”
Galaxy Interactions Trigger Rapid Black Hole Growth: an unprecedented view from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey (2017, background): “…or cluster environments, evidence of AGN feedback due to radio emission from the BH present in the brightest cluster galaxy (so called, maintenance mode feedback) has long been established (e.g., Best et al. 2005; Rafferty et al. 2006; McNamara & Nulsen 2007; Kauffmann et al. 2008; Fabian 2012).”
Radiative efficiency, variability and Bondi accretion on to massive black holes: the transition from radio AGN to quasars in brightest cluster galaxies (2012, methodology): “sample of nearby ellipticals and by Rafferty et al. (2006) ina more distant sample with properties similar to our own and these studies arrived at somewhat different conclusions.”
Jet-induced star formation in gas-rich galaxies (2011, background): “…also is meanwhile considerable evidence from observations of X-ray cavities that the energies deposited by the jets suffice in many cases to suppress the formation of cooling flows in the hot circum-galactic and intra-cluster media (e.g. B̂ırzan et al. 2004; Dunn et al. 2005; Rafferty et al. 2006).”
A synthesis model for AGN evolution: supermassive black holes growth and feedback modes (2008, background): “From these (and other) studies of the cavities, bubbles and weak shocks generated by the radio emitting jetsin the intra-cluster medium (ICM) it appears that AGN are energetically able to balance radiative losses from the ICM in the majorityof cases (Rafferty et al. 2006).”
AGN heating and ICM cooling in the HIFLUGCS sample of galaxy clusters (2008, background): “Recent analyses of galaxy clusters have shown that of those CC clusters which require heating, at least 40% harbor cavities that contain sufficient energy to balance the radiative losses (Rafferty et al. 2008; Nulsen et al. 2006; Rafferty et al. 2006; Dunn & Fabian 2006).”
The Coevolution of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes: Insights from Surveys of the Contemporary Universe (2014, background): “Further cavity power measurements in systems ranging from giant elliptical galaxies to the most massive clusters have refined this correlation (e.g. Dunn et al. 2005, Rafferty et al. 2006, Bı̂rzan et al. 2008, Cavagnolo et al. 2010; see Fig.8).”