Zooming in on supermassive black holes: how resolving their gas cloud host renders their accretion episodic
Born in rapidly evolving mini-halos during the first billion years of the Universe, supermassive black holes (SMBH) feed from gas flows spanning many orders of magnitude, from the cosmic web in which they are embedded to their event horizon. As such, accretion onto SMBHs constitutes a formidable cha...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Journal article |
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Oxford University Press
2018
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| _version_ | 1797060116947664896 |
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| author | Beckmann, R Devriendt, J Slyz, A |
| author_facet | Beckmann, R Devriendt, J Slyz, A |
| author_sort | Beckmann, R |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | Born in rapidly evolving mini-halos during the first billion years of the Universe, supermassive black holes (SMBH) feed from gas flows spanning many orders of magnitude, from the cosmic web in which they are embedded to their event horizon. As such, accretion onto SMBHs constitutes a formidable challenge to tackle numerically, and currently requires the use of sub-grid models to handle the flow on small, unresolved scales. In this paper, we study the impact of resolution on the accretion pattern of SMBHs initially inserted at the heart of dense galactic gas clouds, using a custom super-Lagrangian refinement scheme to resolve the black hole (BH) gravitational zone of influence. We find that once the self-gravitating gas cloud host is sufficiently well resolved, accretion onto the BH is driven by the cloud internal structure, independently of the BH seed mass, provided dynamical friction is present during the early stages of cloud collapse. For a pristine gas mix of hydrogen and helium, a slim disc develops around the BH on sub-parsec scales, turning the otherwise chaotic BH accretion duty cycle into an episodic one, with potentially important consequences for BH feedback. In the presence of such a nuclear disc, BH mass growth predominantly occurs when infalling dense clumps trigger disc instabilities, fuelling intense albeit short-lived gas accretion episodes. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-06T20:13:05Z |
| format | Journal article |
| id | oxford-uuid:2b40ab08-da6a-4ffa-ba08-9df2c238dd2f |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-06T20:13:05Z |
| publishDate | 2018 |
| publisher | Oxford University Press |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:2b40ab08-da6a-4ffa-ba08-9df2c238dd2f2022-03-26T12:29:48ZZooming in on supermassive black holes: how resolving their gas cloud host renders their accretion episodicJournal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:2b40ab08-da6a-4ffa-ba08-9df2c238dd2fSymplectic Elements at OxfordOxford University Press2018Beckmann, RDevriendt, JSlyz, ABorn in rapidly evolving mini-halos during the first billion years of the Universe, supermassive black holes (SMBH) feed from gas flows spanning many orders of magnitude, from the cosmic web in which they are embedded to their event horizon. As such, accretion onto SMBHs constitutes a formidable challenge to tackle numerically, and currently requires the use of sub-grid models to handle the flow on small, unresolved scales. In this paper, we study the impact of resolution on the accretion pattern of SMBHs initially inserted at the heart of dense galactic gas clouds, using a custom super-Lagrangian refinement scheme to resolve the black hole (BH) gravitational zone of influence. We find that once the self-gravitating gas cloud host is sufficiently well resolved, accretion onto the BH is driven by the cloud internal structure, independently of the BH seed mass, provided dynamical friction is present during the early stages of cloud collapse. For a pristine gas mix of hydrogen and helium, a slim disc develops around the BH on sub-parsec scales, turning the otherwise chaotic BH accretion duty cycle into an episodic one, with potentially important consequences for BH feedback. In the presence of such a nuclear disc, BH mass growth predominantly occurs when infalling dense clumps trigger disc instabilities, fuelling intense albeit short-lived gas accretion episodes. |
| spellingShingle | Beckmann, R Devriendt, J Slyz, A Zooming in on supermassive black holes: how resolving their gas cloud host renders their accretion episodic |
| title | Zooming in on supermassive black holes: how resolving their gas cloud host renders their accretion episodic |
| title_full | Zooming in on supermassive black holes: how resolving their gas cloud host renders their accretion episodic |
| title_fullStr | Zooming in on supermassive black holes: how resolving their gas cloud host renders their accretion episodic |
| title_full_unstemmed | Zooming in on supermassive black holes: how resolving their gas cloud host renders their accretion episodic |
| title_short | Zooming in on supermassive black holes: how resolving their gas cloud host renders their accretion episodic |
| title_sort | zooming in on supermassive black holes how resolving their gas cloud host renders their accretion episodic |
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