Cosmological simulations of the growth of supermassive black holes and feedback from active galactic nuclei: method and tests

By C. Booth, Joop Schaye. 2009

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We present a method that self-consistently tracks the growth of supermassive black holes (BHs) and the feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN) in cosmological, hydrodynamical simulations. Our model is a substantially modified version of the one introduced by Springel, Di Matteo & Hernquist implemented in a significantly expanded version of the gadget III code, which contains new prescriptions for star formation, supernova feedback, radiative cooling and chemodynamics. We simulate the growth of BHs from an initial seed state via Eddington-limited accretion of the surrounding gas, and via mergers with other BHs. Because cosmological simulations at present lack both the resolution and the physics to model the multiphase interstellar medium, they tend to strongly underestimate the Bondi–Hoyle accretion rate. To allow low-mass BHs to grow, it is therefore necessary to increase the predicted Bondi–Hoyle rates in star-forming gas by large factors, either by explicitly multiplying the accretion rate by a numerical correction factor or by using an unresolved, subgrid model for the gas close to the BH. We explore the physical regimes where the use of such multiplicative factors is reasonable, and through this introduce a new prescription for gas accretion by BHs. Feedback from AGN is modelled by coupling a fraction of the rest-mass energy of the accreted gas thermally into the surrounding medium. We describe the implementation as well as the limitations of the model in detail and motivate all the changes relative to previous work. We demonstrate how general physical considerations can be used to choose many of the parameters of the model and demonstrate that the fiducial model reproduces observational constraints. We employ a large suite of cosmological simulations, in which the parameters of the BH model are varied away from their fiducial values, to investigate the robustness of the predictions for the cosmic star formation history and the redshift zero cosmic BH density, BH scaling relations and galaxy-specific star formation rates. We find that the freedom introduced by the need to increase the predicted accretion rates by hand, the standard procedure in the literature, is the most significant source of uncertainty. Our simulations demonstrate that supermassive BHs are able to regulate their growth by releasing a fixed amount of energy for a given halo mass, independent of the assumed efficiency of AGN feedback, which sets the normalization of the BH scaling relations. Regardless of whether BH seeds are initially placed above or below the BH scaling relations, they grow on to the same scaling relations. AGN feedback efficiently suppresses star formation in high-mass galaxies.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e88c78304aa76602ed9344860fe7bf27091791f7

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Black hole evolution – I. Supernova-regulated black hole growth (2015, background): “…on the galaxy mass content, the circumgalactic gas properties and the halo mass distribution can E-mail: dubois@iap.fr be dramatic (Di Matteo, Springel & Hernquist 2005; Bower et al. 2006; Croton et al. 2006; Sijacki et al. 2007; Booth & Schaye 2009; Dubois et al. 2010, 2012; Teyssier et al. 2011).”
CONSTRAINTS ON BLACK HOLE GROWTH, QUASAR LIFETIMES, AND EDDINGTON RATIO DISTRIBUTIONS FROM THE SDSS BROAD-LINE QUASAR BLACK HOLE MASS FUNCTION (2010, background): “…et al. 1998; Kauffmann & Haehnelt 2000; Haehnelt & Kauffmann 2000; Wyithe & Loeb 2003; Volonteri et al. 2003; Cattaneo et al. 2005; Di Matteo et al. 2008; Somerville et al. 2008; Hopkins et al. 2008b; Croton 2009; Sijacki et al. 2009; Booth & Schaye 2009; Shen 2009, and references therein).”
The chosen few: the low-mass haloes that host faint galaxies (2014, methodology): “The model includes stellar evolution (Wiersma et al. 2009) and stochastic thermal supernova feedback (Dalla Vecchia & Schaye 2012), as well as blackhole growth and AGN feedback (Rosas-Guevara et al. 2013; Booth & Schaye 2009; Springel et al. 2005).”
Simulating galactic outflows with thermal supernova feedback (2012, methodology): “Indeed, this strategy is for example used in some sub-grid recipes for feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN), which store the AGN energy in the black hole until the neighbouring gas can be heated to a desired temperature (Booth & Schaye 2009).”
Theoretical Challenges in Galaxy Formation (2016, methodology): “An Eddington limited thermal black hole feedback scheme similar to Booth & Schaye (2009) with a density dependent αboost and the same underlying equation of state for the gas, has also been implemented in the adaptive mesh refinement code RAMSES (Dubois et al. 2012, Teyssier et al. 2011).”
Introducing the Illustris Project: the evolution of galaxy populations across cosmic time (2014, background): “…& Davé 2006; Hopkins, Quataert & Murray 2011), black hole growth and feedback (Springel, Di Matteo & Hernquist 2005a; Sijacki & Springel 2006; Booth & Schaye 2009; Dubois et al. 2012), magnetic fields (Dolag 2006; Pakmor, Marinacci & Springel 2014), and cosmic rays (Jubelgas et al. 2008;…”
Jet-induced star formation in gas-rich galaxies (2011, background): “…radio and/or quasar mode) is often thought to heat or expel gas from the galaxy and to be acting mostly on the circum-galactic gas (e.g. Springel et al. 2005; Croton et al. 2006; Sijacki et al. 2007; Bower et al. 2008; Booth & Schaye 2009; Dubois et al. 2011), lowering the star formation rates.”
The effects of galaxy formation on the matter power spectrum: a challenge for precision cosmology (2011, methodology): “Booth & Schaye (2009) and Booth & Schaye (2011) demonstrate that this efficiency reproduces the observed relations between BH mass and both stellar mass and stellar velocity dispersion, as well as their evolution.”
The physics driving the cosmic star formation history (2009, methodology): “Consequently, massive BHs need to suppress the ambient gas density to values far below n∗H in order to reduce the accretion rate to sub-Eddington values (see Booth & Schaye 2009a).”
Bent by baryons: the low-mass galaxy-halo relation (2014, methodology): “The model includes stellar evolution (Wiersma et al. 2009) and stochastic thermal supernova feedback (Dalla Vecchia & Schaye 2012), as well as black-hole growth and AGN feedback (Rosas-Guevara et al. 2013; Booth & Schaye 2009; Springel et al. 2005).”
The Horizon-AGN simulation: evolution of galaxy properties over cosmic time (2016, neutral): “The growth of the BH is tracked self consistently, based on a modified Bondi accretion rate at high gas densities (Booth & Schaye 2009).”
Cosmological simulations of black hole growth: AGN luminosities and downsizing (2013, background): “…is a boost factor for the density and the sound speed which typically is set to 100 as in most related works (unless a more detailed description as introduced in Booth & Schaye 2009 is used) and accounts for the fact that in cosmological simulations we cannot resolve the intracluster medium (ICM)…”
Four phases of angular-momentum buildup in high-z galaxies: from cosmic-web streams through an extended ring to disc and bulge (2014, background): “…include radiative stellar feedback (Krumholz & Dekel 2010; Murray, Quataert & Thompson 2010; Hopkins et al. 2012; Dekel & Krumholz 2013) or AGN feedback (Silk & Rees 1998; Hopkins et al. 2006; Ciotti & Ostriker 2007; Booth & Schaye 2009; Cattaneo et al. 2009; Fabian 2012; DeGraf et al. 2014).”
The case for AGN feedback in galaxy groups (2009, methodology): “These two runs are identical in every way, except that the latter incorporates a prescription for BH growth and AGN feedback, as described in Booth & Schaye (2009) (hereafter BS09), whereas the former does not.”
The cosmic evolution of massive black holes in the Horizon-AGN simulation (2016, methodology): “Indeed, in most cases the parameters of BH accretion and feedback are tuned to reproduce these correlations (e.g. Sijacki et al. 2007; Di Matteo et al. 2008; Booth & Schaye 2009; Dubois et al. 2012).”
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…”
The neutral hydrogen content of galaxies in cosmological hydrodynamic simulations (2013, background): “…10−3 of the mass in stars, the quenching energy corresponds to 1.4% of the rest-mass energy of SMBHs, which is comparable to the energy imparted from AGN feedback in cosmological simulations that self-consistently track black hole growth and feedback (Di Matteo et al. 2005; Booth & Schaye 2009).”
The MassiveBlack-II simulation: The evolution of haloes and galaxies to z ~ 0 (2014, background): “…and studied extensively in cosmological simulations (Li et al. 2007; Sijacki et al. 2007; Colberg & Di Matteo 2008; Di Matteo et al. 2008; Booth & Schaye 2009; Croft et al. 2009; Sijacki, Springel & Haehnelt 2009; Degraf et al. 2010, 2011b; Degraf, Di Matteo & Springel 2011a; Chatterjee…”
Impact of baryon physics on dark matter structures: a detailed simulation study of halo density profiles (2010, methodology): “Booth & Schaye (2009) showed that this model reproduces the redshift zero cosmic BH density as well as the observed relations between BH mass and both the stellar mass and the central stellar velocity dispersion.”
The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments (2014, methodology): “…becomes dominant is sensitive to the parameter Cvisc of the subgrid model for BH accretion (see equation 9 in §4.6.2), the efficiency of the AGN feedback was calibrated to the observed relation between BH mass and stellar mass and does not affect the shape of the GSMF (Booth & Schaye 2009, 2010).”