English

Hyper-massive Black Holes have Faint Broad and Narrow Emission Lines

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2021-01-13 v1

Abstract

The EUV provides most of the ionization that creates the high equivalent width (EW) broad and narrow emission lines (BELs, NELs) of quasars. Spectra of Hypermassive Schwarzschild black holes (HMBHs, MBH1010MM_{BH} \geq 10^{10} M_{\odot}) with α\alpha-discs, decline rapidly in the EUV suggesting much lower EWs. Model spectra for black holes of mass 1061012M10^{6}-10^{12} M_{\odot} and accretion rates 0.03Lbol/Ledd1.00.03 \leq L_{bol}/L_{edd} \leq 1.0 were input to the CLOUDY photoionization code. BELs become \sim100 times weaker in EW from MBH108MM_{BH} \sim 10^8 M_{\odot} to MBH1010MM_{BH} \sim 10^{10} M_{\odot}. The high ionization BELs (O VI 1034 A\overset{\circ}{\mathrm {A}}, C IV 1549 A\overset{\circ}{\mathrm {A}}, He II 1640 A\overset{\circ}{\mathrm {A}}) decline in EW from (MBH106MM_{BH} \geq 10^6 M_{\odot}, reproducing the Baldwin effect, but regain EW for MBH1010MM_{BH} \geq 10^{10} M_{\odot}). The low ionization lines (MgII 2798 A\overset{\circ}{\mathrm {A}}, Hβ\beta 4861 A\overset{\circ}{\mathrm {A}} and Hα\alpha 6563 A\overset{\circ}{\mathrm {A}}) remain weak. Lines for maximally spinning HMBHs behave similarly. Line ratio diagrams for the BELs show that high OVI/Hβ\beta and low CIV/Hα\alpha may pick out HMBH, although OVI is often hard to observe. In NEL BPT diagrams HMBHs lie among star-forming regions, except for highly spinning, high accretion rate HMBHs. In summary, the BELs expected from HMBHs would be hard to detect using the current optical facilities. From 100 to 1012M10^{12} M_{\odot}, the emission lines used to detect AGN only have high EW in the 106109M10^6 - 10^9 M_{\odot} window, where most AGN are found. This selection effect may be distorting reported distributions of MBHM_{BH}.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2007.01438,
  title  = {Hyper-massive Black Holes have Faint Broad and Narrow Emission Lines},
  author = {Harshitha K. Bhat and Susmita Chakravorty and Dhrubojyoti Sengupta and Martin Elvis and Sudeb Ranjan Datta and Nirupam Roy and Caroline Bertemes and Gary Ferland and Savithri H. Ezhikode},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.01438},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

20 pages, 26 figures, to be published in MNRAS