Black hole feedback and the evolution of massive early-type galaxies

Abstract

Observationally, constraining the baryonic cycle within massive galaxies has proven to be quite difficult. In particular, the role of black hole feedback in regulating star formation, a key process in our theoretical understanding of galaxy formation, remains highly debated. We present here observational evidence showing that, at fixed stellar velocity dispersion, the temperature of the hot gas is higher for those galaxies hosting more massive black holes in their centers. Analyzed in the context of well-established scaling relations, particularly the mass-size plane, the relation between the mass of the black hole and the temperature of the hot gas around massive galaxies provides further observational support to the idea that baryonic processes within massive galaxies are regulated by the combined effects of the galaxy halo virial temperature and black hole feedback, in agreement with the expectations from the EAGLE cosmological numerical simulation.

Feedback from Active Galactic Nuclei in Galaxy Groups

“…In sum, by comparing the different X-ray/optical scaling relations, it has emerged that the extended plasma (collisional) atmospheres seem to play a more fundamental role than small-scale (collisionless) stellar properties in the co-evolution of SMBH and groups. This is further supported by zoom-in cosmological simulations [319][320][321]. On the other hand, the slope (and scatter) of the current cosmological simulations still remain too low when compared with the observations (dotted lines in Figure 16), indicating the need to model more realistic feeding and feedback physics (see Section 4) into the coarse subgrid numerical modules.…”

X-ray signatures of black hole feedback: hot galactic atmospheres in IllustrisTNG and X-ray observations

“…The recent discovery of tight correlations between the mass of the central SMBH and the X-ray temperature and luminosity of the hot atmosphere permeating the host galaxy suggests that the gaseous component can play an important role in tracing the growth of SMBHs in massive galaxies (Bogdán et al 2018;Phipps et al 2019;Lakhchaura et al 2019;Gaspari et al 2019;Martín-Navarro et al 2020).…”

“…Recently, X-ray observations have revealed remarkable correlations between the central SMBH masses and the X-ray properties of the hot atmospheres at various spatial and galaxy/halo scales (Bogdán et al 2018;Phipps et al 2019;Lakhchaura et al 2019;Gaspari et al 2019;Martín-Navarro et al 2020). Importantly, these studies show that at the high-mass end (SMBH masses 5 − 10 × 10 7 M ), the X-ray quantities, in particular the X-ray gas temperature, correlate with the SMBH mass even better than the bulge mass and stellar velocity dispersion.…”

Anisotropic satellite galaxy quenching modulated by supermassive black hole activity

“…The expected uncertainty in these black hole mass estimates is of ∼ 0.3 dex due the intrinsic scatter in the M • -σ relation 31 . In individual galaxies, this over-massive vs under-massive black hole metric has been now widely used to probe the interplay between black hole activity and star formation 11,41,[43][44][45][46][47][48] , further supporting a black hole-related origin for the observed signal. For completeness, panels (e), (f), (g), and (h) in Extended Data Fig.…”

“…4. Following previous works 41 , black hole masses are estimated 13/24 Extended Data Figure 2. Sensitivity of the SDSS signal to PA uncertainties.…”