Galaxy-scale Bars in Late-type Sloan Digital Sky Survey Galaxies Do Not Influence the Average Accretion Rates of Supermassive Black Holes

Goulding, Andy D.; Matthaey, Eve; Greene, Jenny E.; Hickox, Ryan C.; Alexander, D. M.; Forman, W.; Jones, C.; Lehmer, Bret; Griffis, S.; Kanek, S.; Oulmakki, M.

doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aa755b

Cited by 42 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 105 publications

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“…The relation between nuclear activity and bars has been further explored via a comparison between accretion rates in barred and non-barred AGN hosts [157,158], that resulted in comparable values. A similar result was obtained in a study using Chandra X-ray archival data to derive an average X-ray luminosity for barred and nonbarred galaxies through stacking analysis [159], that did not show any systematic difference in the average X-ray luminosity between them. These studies imply that AGN are not fed -at least directly -via galactic scale bars.…”

Section: Galactic Scale Barssupporting

confidence: 87%

Observational constraints on the feeding of supermassive black holes

2019

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Supermassive Black Holes grow at the center of galaxies in consonance with them. In this review we discuss the mass feeding mechanisms that lead to this growth in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), focusing on constraints derived from observations of their environment, from extragalactic down to galactic and nuclear scales. At high AGN luminosities, galaxy mergers and interactions play an important role in AGN triggering and feeding. However, gas chaotic cold accretion in galaxy clusters can trigger radiatively inefficient AGNs in brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs). At lower luminosities, minor mergers feed AGN in early-type, gas-starving galaxies, while secular processes dominate in later-type, gas-rich galaxies. While bars do not appear to directly feed AGNs, AGN flickering leads to the dissociation between small and large scales, hence affecting the interpretation of cause and effect. At ∼100 pc scales, recent observations have revealed compact disks and inflows along nuclear gaseous spirals and bars, while chaotic cold accretion continues to feed BCGs at these scales. Estimated mass inflow rates -of 0.01 to a few M yr −1 -are in many cases a thousand times higher than the mass accretion rate to the supermassive black hole. As a result, 10 6 -10 9 M gas reservoirs can be built on 10 7−8 yr, that in turn may lead to the formation of new stars and/or be ejected via the onset of AGN feedback.

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Section: Galactic Scale Barssupporting

confidence: 87%

Observational constraints on the feeding of supermassive black holes

2019

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“…For instance, the tidally-induced, efficient circumnuclear star formation may represent an important accretion bottleneck and explain why there is no correlation between supermassive black hole growth and the presence of galactic bars (e.g. Goulding et al 2017). In the future, it will be beneficial to expand our models to a broader range of spatial scales and observables, to further increase their predictive power and facilitate additional, direct comparisons to the Galactic CMZ and extragalactic nuclei.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The dynamical evolution of molecular clouds near the Galactic Centre – II. Spatial structure and kinematics of simulated clouds

Kruijssen

Dale

Longmore

et al. 2019

Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society

102

113

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The evolution of molecular clouds in galactic centres is thought to differ from that in galactic discs due to a significant influence of the external gravitational potential. We present a set of numerical simulations of molecular clouds orbiting on the 100-pc stream of the Central Molecular Zone (the central ∼ 500 pc of the Galaxy) and characterise their morphological and kinematic evolution in response to the background potential and eccentric orbital motion. We find that the clouds are shaped by strong shear and torques, by tidal and geometric deformation, and by their passage through the orbital pericentre. Within our simulations, these mechanisms control cloud sizes, aspect ratios, position angles, filamentary structure, column densities, velocity dispersions, line-of-sight velocity gradients, spin angular momenta, and kinematic complexity. By comparing these predictions to observations of clouds on the Galactic Centre 'dust ridge', we find that our simulations naturally reproduce a broad range of key observed morphological and kinematic features, which can be explained in terms of wellunderstood physical mechanisms. We argue that the accretion of gas clouds onto the central regions of galaxies, where the rotation curve turns over and the tidal field is fully compressive, is accompanied by transformative dynamical changes to the clouds, leading to collapse and star formation. This can generate an evolutionary progression of cloud collapse with a common starting point, which either marks the time of accretion onto the tidally-compressive region or of the most recent pericentre passage. Together, these processes may naturally produce the synchronised starbursts observed in numerous (extra)galactic nuclei.

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“…Recent studies show no correlation between increased AGN activity and central bars, which could also lead to disk-instabilities and subsequently to a gas inflow to the galaxy center (Cheung et al 2015;Cisternas et al 2015;Goulding et al 2017). This leaves minor mergers and bar-independent secular processes as the remaining viable options for the bulk of black hole growth.…”

Section: Alternative Mechanismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Major Mergers Are Not the Dominant Trigger for High-accretion AGNs at z ∼ 2

Marian

Jahnke

Mechtley

et al. 2019

ApJ

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Research over the past decade has shown diminishing empirical evidence for major galaxy mergers being a dominating or even important mechanism for the growth of supermassive black holes in galaxies and the triggering of optically or X-ray selected active galactic nuclei (AGN).We here for the first time test whether such a connection exists at least in the most 'plausible' part of parameter space for this mechanism: the highest specific accretion rate broad-line AGNs at the peak epoch of black hole activity around z = 2. To that end we examine 21 galaxies hosting a high accreting black hole (L/L edd > 0.7) observed with HST/WFC3 and 92 stellar mass-and redshiftmatched inactive galaxies taken from the CANDELS survey.We removed the AGN point sources from their host galaxies and avoided bias in visual classification by adding and then subtracting mock point sources to and from the comparison galaxies, producing matched residual structures for both sets. The resulting samples were joined, randomized, and subsequently visually ranked with respect to perceived strength of structural distortions by 10 experts. The ensuing individual rankings were combined into a consensus sequence and from this we derived merger fractions for both samples. With the merger fractions f m,agn = 0.24 ± 0.09 for the AGN host galaxy sample and f m,ina = 0.19 ± 0.04 for the inactive galaxies, we find no significant difference between the AGN host galaxies and inactive galaxies. Also, both samples display comparable fractions of diskdominated galaxies. These findings are consistent with previous studies for different AGN populations, and we conclude that even black hole growth at the highest specific accretion rates and at the peak of cosmic AGN activity is not predominantly caused by major mergers.Considering AGN and merger timescales we conclude that it is highly unlikely that a potential time lag could significantly affect our results. We also calculate the inverse view and infer that only ∼20% of all merging galaxies have high-accretion AGN activity during the ongoing merger. Eventually, we also find no significant connection between post-starburst galaxies and AGNs.

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Galaxy-scale Bars in Late-type Sloan Digital Sky Survey Galaxies Do Not Influence the Average Accretion Rates of Supermassive Black Holes

Cited by 42 publications

References 105 publications

Observational constraints on the feeding of supermassive black holes

Observational constraints on the feeding of supermassive black holes

The dynamical evolution of molecular clouds near the Galactic Centre – II. Spatial structure and kinematics of simulated clouds

Major Mergers Are Not the Dominant Trigger for High-accretion AGNs at z ∼ 2

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