How Do Massive Black Holes Get Their Gas? - INSPIRE

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How Do Massive Black Holes Get Their Gas?

Dec, 2009

30 pages

Published in:

Mon.Not.Roy.Astron.Soc. 407 (2010) 1529-1564

e-Print:

0912.3257 [astro-ph.CO]

DOI:

10.1111/j.1365-2966.2010.17064.x

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Abstract: (arXiv)

We use multi-scale SPH simulations to follow the inflow of gas from galactic scales to <0.1pc, where the gas begins to resemble a traditional Keplerian accretion disk. The key ingredients are gas, stars, black holes (BHs), self-gravity, star formation, and stellar feedback. We use ~100 simulations to survey a large parameter space of galaxy properties and subgrid models for the ISM physics. We generate initial conditions for our simulations of galactic nuclei (<~300pc) using galaxy scale simulations, including both major mergers and isolated bar-(un)stable disk galaxies. For sufficiently gas-rich, disk-dominated systems, a series of gravitational instabilities generates large accretion rates of up to 1-10 M_sun/yr onto the BH (at <<0.1pc)/ sufficient to fuel the most luminous quasars. The BH accretion rate is highly time variable, given fixed conditions at ~kpc. At >~10pc, our simulations resemble the 'bars within bars' model, but the gas exhibits diverse morphologies, including spirals, rings, clumps, and bars/ their duty cycle is modest, complicating attempts to correlate BH accretion with nuclear morphology. At ~1-10pc, the gravitational potential becomes dominated by the BH and bar-like modes are no longer present. However, the gas becomes unstable to a standing, eccentric disk or a single-armed spiral mode (m=1), driving the gas to sub-pc scales. Proper treatment of this mode requires including star formation and the self-gravity of both the stars and gas. We predict correlations between BHAR and SFR at different galactic nuclei: nuclear SF is more tightly coupled to AGN activity, but correlations exist at all scales.

Note:

20 figures, 36 pages. Accepted to MNRAS (expanded to match accepted version). Movies of the simulations described here can be found at http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~phopkins/Site/Movies_zoom.html

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