Related papers: Why Do AGN Lighthouses Switch Off?
At luminosities below a few percent of Eddington, accreting black holes switch to a hard spectral state which is very different from the soft blackbody-like spectral state that is found at higher luminosities. The hard state is…
We have studied the X-ray nuclear activity of 187 nearby (distance < 15 Mpc) galaxies observed with Chandra/ACIS. We found that 86 of them have a point-like X-ray core, consistent with an accreting black hole (BH). We argue that the…
We investigate the Eddington ratio distribution of X-ray selected broad-line active galactic nuclei (AGN) in the redshift range 1.0<z<2.2, where the number density of AGNs peaks. Combining the optical and Subaru/FMOS near-infrared…
The extremely hot and tenuous accretion flow in the immediate vicinity of Sgr A* is believed to be invisible (too dim) in the X-ray band, except for short X-ray flares. Here we point out that during pericenter passages, close brightest…
High-resolution X-ray observations offer a unique tool for probing the still elusive connection between galaxy mergers and active galactic nuclei (AGNs). We present an analysis of nuclear X-ray emission in an optically selected sample of 92…
We use new central stellar velocity dispersions and nuclear X-ray and Halpha luminosities for the Palomar survey of nearby galaxies to investigate the distribution of nuclear bolometric luminosities and Eddington ratios for their central…
(Abridged) We propose a new method to estimate the Bondi (hot gas) accretion rates, \dot M_B, onto the supermassive black holes (SMBHs) at the centres of elliptical galaxies. It can be applied even if the Bondi radius is not well-resolved…
We examine unresolved nuclear X-ray sources in 57 brightest cluster galaxies to study the relationship between nuclear X-ray emission and accretion onto supermassive black holes (SMBHs). The majority of the clusters in our sample have…
Our X-ray study of the nuclear activity in a new sample of six quiescent early-type galaxies, and in a larger sample from the literature, confirmed (Soria et al., Paper I) that the Bondi accretion rate of diffuse hot gas is not a good…
In the last several years, a number of observing campaigns of the massive black hole Sgr A* has been carried out in order to address two important issues: one concerns the underluminous nature of Sgr A* with its bolometric luminosity being…
We have studied the nuclear activity in a sample of six quiescent early-type galaxies, with new Chandra data and archival HST optical images. Their nuclear sources have X-ray luminosities ~ 10^{38} - 10^{39} erg/s (L_X/L_Edd ~ 10^{-8} -…
We use an X-ray stacking technique to investigate the evolution of the mean X-ray luminosity of ~21,000 red galaxies at 0.3 < z < 0.9 as a function of their stellar mass and redshift. The red galaxies are selected from the 9.3 deg^2 Bootes…
We consider the fuelling of the central massive black hole in Active Galactic Nuclei, through an inhomogeneous accretion flow. Performing simple analytical treatments, we show that shocks between elements (clumps) forming the accretion flow…
We analyze 134 ks Chandra ACIS-I observations of the Galactic Centre (GC) performed in July 2011. The X-ray image with the field of view $17' \times 17'$ contains the hot plasma surrounding the Sgr~A*. The obtained surface brightness map…
Chandra X-ray observations of the giant elliptical galaxy M87 resolve the thermal state of the hot interstellar medium into the accretion (Bondi) radius of its central 3 10^9 Msun black hole. We measure the X-ray gas temperature and density…
The globular cluster M15 has recently been found to host a possible central black hole with a mass of ~2000 solar masses. A deep, high-resolution Chandra image failed to detect the "nucleus" of the cluster in X-rays. The upper limit on the…
Accretion rates onto AGN are likely to be extremely variable on short timescales; much shorter than the typical cooling time of X-ray emitting gas in elliptical galaxies and galaxy clusters. Using the Langevin approach it is shown that, for…
Accretion onto central massive black holes in galaxies is often modelled with the Bondi solution. In this paper we study a generalization of the classical Bondi accretion theory, considering the additional effects of the gravitational…
NGC 3115 is known as the low-luminosity active galactic nucleus which hosts the nearest ($z\sim0.002$) billion solar mass supermassive black hole ($\sim1.5\times10^9~M_\odot$). Its Bondi radius $r_\mathrm{B}$ ($\sim3\farcs6$) can be readily…
Models for the origin of the hard X-ray background have suggested that sources with the most accretion activity lie hidden in highly obscured AGN. We report on our study of hard, serendipitous sources in the fields of Chandra clusters with…