| Summary: | <p>We report the discovery of the ‘mm fundamental plane of black hole accretion’, which is a tight correlation between the nuclear 1 mm luminosity (<em>L</em><sub>ν, mm</sub>), the intrinsic 2–10 keV X-ray luminosity (<em>L</em><sub>X, 2–10</sub>) and the supermassive black hole (SMBH) mass (<em>M</em><sub>BH</sub>) with an intrinsic scatter (σ<sub>int</sub>) of 0.40 dex. The plane is found for a sample of 48 nearby galaxies, most of which are low-luminosity active galactic nuclei. Combining these sources with a sample of high-luminosity (quasar-like) nearby AGN, we show that the plane still holds. We also find that <em>M</em><sub>BH</sub> correlates with <em>L</em><sub>ν, mm</sub> at a highly significant level, although such correlation is less tight than the mm fundamental plane (σ<sub>int</sub> = 0.51 dex). Crucially, we show that spectral energy distribution (SED) models for both advection-dominated accretion flows (ADAFs) and compact jets can explain the existence of these relations, which are not reproduced by the standard torus-thin accretion disc models usually associated to quasar-like AGN. The ADAF models reproduces the observed relations somewhat better than those for compact jets, although neither provides a perfect fit. Our findings thus suggest that radiatively inefficient accretion processes such as those in ADAFs or compact (and thus possibly young) jets may play a key role in both low- and high-luminosity AGN. This mm fundamental plane also offers a new, rapid method to (indirectly) estimate SMBH masses.</p>
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