Abstract

Contributed Talk - Splinter SMBHs

Wednesday, 23 September 2020, 09:05   (virtual room K)

Universal transition diagram from dormant to actively accreting supermassive black holes

Kohei Inayoshi, Zoltan Haiman, Jeremiah P. Ostriker, Rolf Kuiper, Luis Ho, Kohei Ichikawa
Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Peking University

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are ubiquitously harbored at the centers of massive nearby galaxies. The vast majority of SMBHs in the local universe show levels of activity much lower than those expected from gas supplying rates onto the galactic nuclei, and only a small fraction of silent SMBHs can turn into active galactic nuclei (AGN). Performing 2D hydrodynamical simulations of BH accretion that resolve the relevant physical scales from the BH influence radius down to an accretion disk, we study the state transitional behavior of accreting BHs in galactic nuclei from radiatively inefficient phases to cold disk accretion. The simulation result naturally explains (1) the reason for the offset between the observed luminosities and theoretical predictions for nearby quiescent SMBHs, and (2) the conditions to fuel gas into the nuclear SMBH. In addition, the dense and cold disk formed in the nuclear region tends to be gravitationally unstable, which leads to active star formation. This suggests a possible explanation of the correlation between star formation rates and BH feeding rates in Seyfert galaxies, the origin of massive stars in the galactic nuclei and the remnant of post-AGN activity