Observational Evidence for Enhanced Black Hole Accretion in Giant Elliptical Galaxies
© 2021. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. We present a study of the relationship between black hole accretion rate (BHAR) and star formation rate (SFR) in a sample of giant elliptical galaxies. These galaxies, which live at the centers of galaxy groups and clusters, have...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
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| Other Authors: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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American Astronomical Society
2022
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/141967 |
| _version_ | 1826206527503990784 |
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| author | McDonald, Michael McNamara, Brian R Calzadilla, Michael S Chen, Chien-Ting Gaspari, Massimo Hickox, Ryan C Kara, Erin Korchagin, Ilia |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics McDonald, Michael McNamara, Brian R Calzadilla, Michael S Chen, Chien-Ting Gaspari, Massimo Hickox, Ryan C Kara, Erin Korchagin, Ilia |
| author_sort | McDonald, Michael |
| collection | MIT |
| description | © 2021. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. We present a study of the relationship between black hole accretion rate (BHAR) and star formation rate (SFR) in a sample of giant elliptical galaxies. These galaxies, which live at the centers of galaxy groups and clusters, have star formation and black hole activity that is primarily fueled by gas condensing out of the hot intracluster medium. For a sample of 46 galaxies spanning five orders of magnitude in BHAR and SFR, we find a mean ratio of, independent of the methodology used to constrain both SFR and BHAR. This ratio is significantly higher than most previously published values for field galaxies. We investigate whether these high BHAR/SFR ratios are driven by high BHAR, low SFR, or a different accretion efficiency in radio galaxies. The data suggest that the high BHAR/SFR ratios are primarily driven by boosted black hole accretion in spheroidal galaxies compared to their disk counterparts. We propose that the angular momentum of the cool gas is the primary driver in suppressing BHAR in lower-mass galaxies, with massive galaxies accreting gas that has condensed out of the hot phase on nearly radial trajectories. Additionally, we demonstrate that the relationship between specific BHAR and SFR (sBHAR and sSFR) has much less scatter over six orders of magnitude in both parameters, due to competing dependence on morphology between the M BH-M ∗ and BHAR-SFR relations. In general, active galaxies selected by typical techniques have sBHAR/sSFR ∼ 10, while galactic nuclei with no clear AGN signatures have sBHAR/sSFR ∼ 1, consistent with a universal M BH-M spheroid relation. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:34:22Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/141967 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T13:34:22Z |
| publishDate | 2022 |
| publisher | American Astronomical Society |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1419672023-08-11T17:05:26Z Observational Evidence for Enhanced Black Hole Accretion in Giant Elliptical Galaxies McDonald, Michael McNamara, Brian R Calzadilla, Michael S Chen, Chien-Ting Gaspari, Massimo Hickox, Ryan C Kara, Erin Korchagin, Ilia Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research © 2021. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. We present a study of the relationship between black hole accretion rate (BHAR) and star formation rate (SFR) in a sample of giant elliptical galaxies. These galaxies, which live at the centers of galaxy groups and clusters, have star formation and black hole activity that is primarily fueled by gas condensing out of the hot intracluster medium. For a sample of 46 galaxies spanning five orders of magnitude in BHAR and SFR, we find a mean ratio of, independent of the methodology used to constrain both SFR and BHAR. This ratio is significantly higher than most previously published values for field galaxies. We investigate whether these high BHAR/SFR ratios are driven by high BHAR, low SFR, or a different accretion efficiency in radio galaxies. The data suggest that the high BHAR/SFR ratios are primarily driven by boosted black hole accretion in spheroidal galaxies compared to their disk counterparts. We propose that the angular momentum of the cool gas is the primary driver in suppressing BHAR in lower-mass galaxies, with massive galaxies accreting gas that has condensed out of the hot phase on nearly radial trajectories. Additionally, we demonstrate that the relationship between specific BHAR and SFR (sBHAR and sSFR) has much less scatter over six orders of magnitude in both parameters, due to competing dependence on morphology between the M BH-M ∗ and BHAR-SFR relations. In general, active galaxies selected by typical techniques have sBHAR/sSFR ∼ 10, while galactic nuclei with no clear AGN signatures have sBHAR/sSFR ∼ 1, consistent with a universal M BH-M spheroid relation. 2022-04-20T15:39:02Z 2022-04-20T15:39:02Z 2021 2022-04-20T15:35:25Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/141967 McDonald, Michael, McNamara, Brian R, Calzadilla, Michael S, Chen, Chien-Ting, Gaspari, Massimo et al. 2021. "Observational Evidence for Enhanced Black Hole Accretion in Giant Elliptical Galaxies." Astrophysical Journal, 908 (1). en 10.3847/1538-4357/ABD47F Astrophysical Journal Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf American Astronomical Society The American Astronomical Society |
| spellingShingle | McDonald, Michael McNamara, Brian R Calzadilla, Michael S Chen, Chien-Ting Gaspari, Massimo Hickox, Ryan C Kara, Erin Korchagin, Ilia Observational Evidence for Enhanced Black Hole Accretion in Giant Elliptical Galaxies |
| title | Observational Evidence for Enhanced Black Hole Accretion in Giant Elliptical Galaxies |
| title_full | Observational Evidence for Enhanced Black Hole Accretion in Giant Elliptical Galaxies |
| title_fullStr | Observational Evidence for Enhanced Black Hole Accretion in Giant Elliptical Galaxies |
| title_full_unstemmed | Observational Evidence for Enhanced Black Hole Accretion in Giant Elliptical Galaxies |
| title_short | Observational Evidence for Enhanced Black Hole Accretion in Giant Elliptical Galaxies |
| title_sort | observational evidence for enhanced black hole accretion in giant elliptical galaxies |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/141967 |
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