Energy input from quasars regulates the growth and activity of black holes and their host galaxies

By T. Di Matteo, Volker Springel, L. Hernquist. Nature, 2005

2,633 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In the early Universe, while galaxies were still forming, black holes as massive as a billion solar masses powered quasars. Supermassive black holes are found at the centres of most galaxies today, where their masses are related to the velocity dispersions of stars in their host galaxies and hence to the mass of the central bulge of the galaxy. This suggests a link between the growth of the black holes and their host galaxies, which has indeed been assumed for a number of years. But the origin of the observed relation between black hole mass and stellar velocity dispersion, and its connection with the evolution of galaxies, have remained unclear. Here we report simulations that simultaneously follow star formation and the growth of black holes during galaxy–galaxy collisions. We find that, in addition to generating a burst of star formation, a merger leads to strong inflows that feed gas to the supermassive black hole and thereby power the quasar. The energy released by the quasar expels enough gas to quench both star formation and further black hole growth. This determines the lifetime of the quasar phase (approaching 100 million years) and explains the relationship between the black hole mass and the stellar velocity dispersion.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c6fd68ea15592bba28c88380fb4ed3ef5dd2cf42

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Citations in the corpus

The MassiveBlack-II simulation: The evolution of haloes and galaxies to z ~ 0 (2014, methodology): “This model for the growth of BHs has been developed by Di Matteo et al. (2005) and Springel et al. (2005a).”
Breaking the hierarchy of galaxy formation (2005, background): “Numerical simulations of merging galaxies with central supermassive black holes indicate that this can be a significant source of additional feedback even though the outflow is strongly beamed (Di Matteo et al. 2005; Springel et al. 2005b).”
Forming disc galaxies in ΛCDM simulations (2006, background): “We speculate that another type of feedback, possibly from an active QSO at the bulge centre (Di Matteo et al. 2005; Hopkins et al. 2005), would decrease SF in the centre and lower the central gas density, reducing the relative weight of the central baryonic concentration.”
An Observational Determination of the Bolometric Quasar Luminosity Function (2006, background): “…that feedback from black hole growth plays a key role in determining the black holeYhost galaxy (e.g., MBH- ) relationships (Silk & Rees 1998; Di Matteo et al. 2005) 1 Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA. 2 Department of Physics andAstronomy, JohnsHopkinsUniversity,…”
The physics of galactic winds driven by active galactic nuclei (2012, background): “…in galaxy formation, including ∗ Miller Fellow; cgiguere@berkeley.edu establishing the MBH − σ relation (e.g., Silk & Rees 1998; Wyithe & Loeb 2003; Di Matteo et al. 2005) and truncating star formation in massive galaxies (Springel et al. 2005; Hopkins et al. 2008), it is only recently that…”
Chandra and Spitzer Unveil Heavily Obscured Quasars in the Chandra/SWIRE Survey (2006, background): “As the AGN reaches a certain luminosity, its radiation can cause the expulsion and destruction of the surrounding material and the system appears as an unobscured AGN (Silk & Rees 1998; Granato et al. 2004; Springel et al. 2005; Hopkins et al. 2005; Di Matteo et al. 2005; Cattaneo et al. 2005).”
Ionized gas outflows and global kinematics of low-z luminous star-forming galaxies (2014, background): “…massive star formation and/or feeding of central black holes would expel the surrounding interstellar medium as a consequence of the mechanical and radiative energy liberated, generating strong outflows (di Matteo et al. 2005;Hopkins et al. 2012; Murray et al. 2011; Ostriker & Shetty 2011).”
CHASING HIGHLY OBSCURED QSOs IN THE COSMOS FIELD (2008, background): “…be more efficient at inhibiting star-formation in their host galaxies, by heating the interstellar matter through winds, shocks, and high energy radiation (Silk & Rees 1998, Fabian 1999, Granato et al. 2001, 2004, Di Matteo et al. 2005, Menci et al. 2006, 2008, Bower et al. 2006, Li et al. 2007).”
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).”
Science with ASKAP (2008, background): “With regard to the largest galaxies, several authors [5, 81, 114, 233, 247] have suggested a connection between the formation of powerful QSOs and ULIRGs (Ultra-Luminous Infra-Red Galaxies), or their high-redshift counterparts, the sub-millimetre galaxies.”
Unveiling Obscured Accretion in the Chandra Deep Field-South (2007, methodology): “First attempts to constrain models for the formation and evolution of structure in the Universe using the evolving optical and X-ray AGN luminosity functions have been presented by Granato et al. (2001, 2004), Di Matteo et al. (2005), and Menci et al. (2004, 2005).”
Galaxy formation theory (2010, background): “This is in agreement with other numerical simulations, such as Springel et al. 2005a; Matteo et al. 2005; Sijacki et al. 2007, 2009; Booth and Schaye 2009, which incorporate energy injection from quasars (typically triggered by major mergers) and show that AGN activity can effectively expel gas…”