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Published January 2017 | Published + Submitted
Journal Article Open

Gravitational torque-driven black hole growth and feedback in cosmological simulations

Abstract

We investigate black hole–host galaxy scaling relations in cosmological simulations with a self-consistent black hole growth and feedback model. Our sub-grid accretion model captures the key scalings governing angular momentum transport by gravitational torques from galactic scales down to parsec scales, while our kinetic feedback implementation enables the injection of outflows with properties chosen to match observed nuclear outflows (star formation-driven winds are not included to isolate the effects of black hole feedback). We show that 'quasar mode' feedback can have a large impact on the thermal properties of the intergalactic medium and the growth of galaxies and massive black holes for kinetic feedback efficiencies as low as 0.1 per cent relative to the bolometric luminosity. None the less, our simulations indicate that the black hole–host scaling relations are only weakly dependent on the effects of black hole feedback on galactic scales, since black hole feedback suppresses the growth of galaxies and massive black holes by a similar amount. In contrast, the rate at which gravitational torques feed the central black hole relative to the host galaxy star formation rate governs the slope and normalization of the black hole–host correlations. Our results suggest that a common gas supply regulated by gravitational torques is the primary driver of the observed co-evolution of black holes and galaxies.

Additional Information

© 2016 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. Accepted 2016 October 5. Received 2016 August 24; in original form 2016 March 20; Editorial Decision 2016 October 3. We thank M. Elitzur, E. Quataert, and P. Torrey for useful discussions and M. van Daalen for providing the initial conditions. We also thank the referee for constructive comments that helped improve the paper. DAA acknowledges support by a CIERA Postdoctoral Fellowship. RD acknowledges support from the South African Research Chairs Initiative and the South African National Research Foundation, and funding from NASA ATP grant NNX12AH86G to the University of Arizona. CAFG was supported by NSF through grants AST-1412836 and AST-1517491, by NASA through grant NNX15AB22G, and by STScI through grants HST-AR-14293.001-A and HST-GO-14268.022-A. FÖ acknowledges support from NSF grant AST-1108753 and NASA TCAN award NNX14AB48G. Support for PFH was provided by an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, NASA ATP Grant NNX14AH35G, and NSF Collaborative Research Grant #1411920 and CAREER grant#1455342. Numerical calculations were run using Northwestern University's compute cluster 'Quest' and the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), which is supported by NSF grant ACI-1053575. This work benefited from the hospitality of the Aspen Center for Physics, supported by NSF grant PHY-1066293.

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Submitted - 1603.08007v1.pdf

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August 19, 2023
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