English

The link between star-formation and supermassive black hole properties

Astrophysics of Galaxies 2023-12-06 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics

Abstract

It is well known that supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and their host galaxies co-evolve. AGN feedback plays an important role on this symbiosis. To study the effect of the AGN feedback on the host galaxy, a popular method is to study the star-formation rate (SFR) as a function of the X-ray luminosity (LX_X). However, hydrodynamical simulations suggest that the cumulative impact of AGN feedback on a galaxy is encapsulated in the mass of the SMBH, MBH_{BH}, rather than the LX_X. In this study, we compare the SFR of AGN and non-AGN galaxies as a function of LX_X, MBH_{BH}, Eddington ratio (nEdd_{Edd}) and specific black hole accretion rate (λsBHAR\lambda _{sBHAR}). For that purpose, we use 122 X-ray AGN in the XMM-XXL field and 3371 galaxies from the VIPERS survey and calculate the SFRnorm_{norm} parameter, defined as the ratio of the SFR of AGN to the SFR of non-AGN galaxies with similar stellar mass, M_*, and redshift. Our datasets span a redshift range of 0.5z1.2\rm 0.5\leq z\leq 1.2. The results show that the correlation between SFRnorm_{norm} and MBH_{BH} is stronger compared to that between SFRnorm_{norm} and LX_X. A weaker correlation is found between SFRnorm_{norm} and λsBHAR\lambda _{sBHAR}. No correlation is detected between SFRnorm_{norm} and nEdd_{Edd}. These results corroborate the idea that the MBH_{BH} is a more robust tracer of the cumulative impact of the AGN feedback compared to the instantaneous accretion rate (LX_X) and, thus, a better predictive parameter of the changes of the SFR of the host galaxy.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2309.15909,
  title  = {The link between star-formation and supermassive black hole properties},
  author = {George Mountrichas and Veronique Buat},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.15909},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

A&A accepted, 10 pages, 4 figures, 6 tables