Why do Black Holes Trace Bulges (& Central Surface Densities), Instead of Galaxies as a Whole?
Abstract
Previous studies of fueling black holes (BHs) in galactic nuclei have argued (on scales ~0.01-1000pc) accretion is dynamical with inflow rates in terms of gas mass , dynamical time , and some . But these models generally neglected expulsion of gas by stellar feedback, or considered extremely high densities where expulsion is inefficient. Studies of star formation, however, have shown on sub-kpc scales the expulsion efficiency scales with the gravitational acceleration as where and is the momentum injection rate from young stars. Adopting this as the simplest correction for stellar feedback, , we show this provides a more accurate description of simulations with stellar feedback at low densities. This has immediate consequences, predicting e.g. the slope and normalization of the and relation, SFR relations, and explanations for outliers in compact Es. Most strikingly, because star formation simulations show expulsion is efficient () below total-mass surface density (where ), BH mass is predicted to specifically trace host galaxy properties above a critical surface brightness (B-band ). This naturally explains why BH masses preferentially reflect bulge properties or central surface-densities (), not 'total' galaxy properties.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2103.10444,
title = {Why do Black Holes Trace Bulges (& Central Surface Densities), Instead of Galaxies as a Whole?},
author = {Philip F. Hopkins and Sarah Wellons and Daniel Angles-Alcazar and Claude-Andre Faucher-Giguere and Michael Y. Grudic},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.10444},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
8 pages, 3 figures, updated to match published MNRAS version