Supermassive black holes, star formation and downsizing of elliptical galaxies

Abstract

The overabundance of Mg relative to Fe, observed in the nuclei of bright ellipticals, and its increase with galactic mass, poses a serious problem for all current models of galaxy formation. Here we improve on the one-zone chemical evolution models for elliptical galaxies by taking into account positive feedback produced in the early stages of super-massive central black hole growth. We can account for both the observed correlation and the scatter if the observed anti-hierarchical behaviour of the AGN population couples to galaxy assembly and results in an enhancement of the star formation efficiency which is proportional to galactic mass. At low and intermediate galactic masses, however, a slower mode for star formation suffices to account for the observational properties.

7 pages, 4 figures, MNRAS accepted

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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Feedback from central black holes in elliptical galaxies. I: models with either radiative or mechanical feedback but not both
• Correlation Between the Total Gravitating Mass of Groups and Clusters and the Supermassive Black Hole Mass of Brightest Galaxies
• Anisotropic AGN Outflows and Enrichment of the Intergalactic Medium
• A study of the scaling relation $M_{\bullet }\propto R_e{\sigma }^3$ for supermassive black holes and an update of the corresponding theoretical model