Gas expulsion by quasar-driven winds as a solution to the overcooling problem in galaxy groups and clusters

By Ian G. McCarthy, Joop Schaye, Richard G. Bower, Trevor J. Ponman, C. Booth, Claudio Dalla Vecchia, Volker Springel. 2010

178 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Galaxy groups are not scaled down versions of massive galaxy clusters - the hot gas in groups (known as the intragroup medium, IGrM for short) is, on average, less dense than the intracluster medium, implying that one or more non-gravitational processes (e.g., radiative cooling, star formation, and/or feedback) has had a relatively larger effect on groups. In the present study, we compare a number of cosmological hydrodynamic simulations that form part of the OverWhelmingly Large Simulations project to isolate and quantify the effects of cooling and feedback from supernovae (SNe) and active galactic nuclei (AGN) on the gas. This is achieved by comparing Lagrangian thermal histories of the gas in the different runs, which were all started from identical initial conditions. While radiative cooling, star formation, and SN feedback are all necessary ingredients, only runs that also include AGN feedback are able to successfully reproduce the optical and X-ray properties of groups and low-mass clusters. We isolate how, when, and exactly what gas is heated by AGN. Interestingly, we find that the gas that constitutes the present-day IGrM is that which was not strongly heated by AGN. Instead, the low median density/high median entropy of the gas in present-day groups is achieved by the ejection of lower entropy gas from low-mass progenitor galaxies at high redshift (primarily 2 . z . 4). This corresponds to the epoch when supermassive black holes accreted most of their mass, typically at a rate that is close to the Eddington limit (i.e., when the black holes are in a ‘quasar mode’).

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f7a84bc14773e33ceab69766c952fd933f6de1c6

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Citations in the corpus

Stellar Mass—Halo Mass Relation and Star Formation Efficiency in High-Mass Halos (2014, methodology): “Inclusion of strong AGN feedback in simulations using phenomenological recipes indeed lowers stellar fractions by a significant factor (e.g., McCarthy et al. 2010, 2011; Planelles et al. 2013; Martizzi et al. 2012, 2013; Ragone-Figueroa et al. 2013).”
The impact of angular momentum on black hole accretion rates in simulations of galaxy formation (2013, background): “In higher mass haloes, the AGNs regulate the galaxy growth either by offsetting the cooling rate (Bower et al. 2006), or by puffing up the hot gas halo (Bower et al. 2008; McCarthy et al. 2011; Bower, Benson & Crain 2012) so that the cooling rate is reduced.”
REPRODUCING THE STELLAR MASS/HALO MASS RELATION IN SIMULATED ΛCDM GALAXIES: THEORY VERSUS OBSERVATIONAL ESTIMATES (2012, background): “At larger masses, energy feedback from super-massive black holes (SMBHs) is thought to be the dominant process responsible for lowering the SF efficiency (Bower et al. 2006; Croton 2009; McCarthy et al. 2011; Johansson et al. 2012).”
Cosmic Discordance: Are Planck CMB and CFHTLenS weak lensing measurements out of tune? (2014, methodology): “…for the presence of black holes and AGN feedback in dark matter halos using the prescription described in Booth & Schaye (2009), is the most realistic of the different OWLS models, since it matches well both the observed optical and X-ray properties of galaxy groups (McCarthy et al. (2011)).”
AGN-driven quenching of star formation: morphological and dynamical implications for early-type galaxies (2013, background): “…in massive haloes to get realistic galaxy masses and colours (Sijacki & Springel 2006; Puchwein, Sijacki & Springel 2008; Khalatyan et al. 2008; McCarthy et al. 2010, 2011; Dubois et al. 2010, 2011; Teyssier et al. 2011), and that it can reproduce the relatively tight MBH–Mb, MBH–σ b…”
Impact of supermassive black hole growth on star formation (2017, background): “However, it is not yet fully understood what role AGN play in less dense environments[19, 36] or if gas needs to be ejected during earlier AGN episodes for these mechanically-dominated AGN to be effective at regulating gas cooling[37].”
Gaseous Galaxy Halos (2012, background): “…smaller than the cosmic mean (∼ 0.4 for the Milky Way), and this is attributed to powerful outflow mechanisms (Bregman, 2007; McGaugh et al., 2010), as is the ability to reproduce the basic properties of a galaxy in cosmological simulations (Benson et al., 2003; McCarthy et al., 2010, 2011).”
AGN outflows and feedback twenty years on (2018, unknown): “A similar scenario was outlined by McCarthy et al.[85], where quenching was argued to occur via pre-ejection of baryons from the progenitors of current massive galaxies at high redshift.”
The EAGLE project: Simulating the evolution and assembly of galaxies and their environments (2014, methodology): “For OWLS we found that this method led to excellent agreement with both optical and detailed X-ray observations of groups and clusters (McCarthy et al. 2010, 2011; Le Brun et al. 2014).”
What drives the growth of black holes (2011, result): “However, models suggest that feedback from growing massive BHs (indeed, the same outflows that are invoked to produce the BHspheroid relation) can naturally produce the LX–TX relations similar to those observed (e.g., Bower et al., 2008; Booth & Schaye, 2010; McCarthy et al., 2010, 2011).”
Towards a realistic population of simulated galaxy groups and clusters (2013, methodology): “This reduction in gas mass can be compensated to a degree by the slight increase in temperature due to the fact that much of the ejected gas had low entropy (and also additional high entropy gas is able to accrete within r500; McCarthy et al. 2011).”
Self-regulated growth of supermassive black holes by a dual jet-heating active galactic nucleus feedback mechanism: methods, tests and implications for cosmological simulations (2011, background): “…reproduced relationships between BH masses and galaxy properties (Sijacki et al. 2007; Di Matteo et al. 2008; Booth & Schaye 2009, 2011), and suppressed the cooling catastrophe in groups and clusters of galaxies (Khalatyan et al. 2008; Puchwein, Sijacki & Springel 2008; McCarthy et al. 2010, 2011).”
The BAHAMAS project: Calibrated hydrodynamical simulations for large-scale structure cosmology (2016, methodology): “The latter is a particularly interesting test, since we have previously shown (McCarthy et al. 2011) that high-z quasars do the lion’s share of the work in setting the present-day properties of the hot gas.”
The effects of galaxy formation on the matter power spectrum: a challenge for precision cosmology (2011, methodology): “McCarthy et al. (2010) have shown that the AGN simulation, but not the reference model, provides excellent agreement with both optical and X-ray observables of groups of galaxies at redshift zero.”
Quantifying the effect of baryon physics on weak lensing tomography (2011, methodology): “This has been measured by McCarthy et al. (2010; 2011) for the OWLS simulations and effectively determines the value of ρ0 in Eqn.”
Kiloparsec-scale outflows are prevalent among luminous AGN: outflows and feedback in the context of the overall AGN population (2014, background): “…Vecchia & Schaye 2008; Hopkins et al. 2013a), it is believed that AGN activityis required to drive the highest velocity outflows and are particularly important for the evolution of the most massive galaxies (e.g., Benson et al. 2003; McCarthy et al. 2011; Hopkins et al. 2013b; Zubovas & King 2014).”
Theoretical Challenges in Galaxy Formation (2016, unknown): “By removing low entropy gas at higher redshifts (at the peak of the black hole growth) AGN bring the simulated present day hot gas properties in much better agreement with observations of thermal X-ray emission (Le Brun et al. 2014, McCarthy et al. 2011, 2010).”