An upper limit to the central density of dark matter haloes from consistency with the presence of massive central black holes

Abstract

We study the growth rates of massive black holes in the centres of galaxies from accretion of dark matter from their surrounding haloes. By considering only the accretion due to dark matter particles on orbits unbound to the central black hole, we obtain a firm lower limit to the resulting accretion rate. We find that a runaway accretion regime occurs on a timescale which depends on the three characteristic parameters of the problem: the initial mass of the black hole, and the volume density and velocity dispersion of the dark matter particles in its vicinity. An analytical treatment of the accretion rate yields results implying that for the largest black hole masses inferred from QSO studies ($>10^9{M}_{\odot }$), the runaway regime would be reached on time scales which are shorter than the lifetimes of the haloes in question for central dark matter densities in excess of $250M_{\odot }$pc${}^{-3}$. Since reaching runaway accretion would strongly distort the host dark matter halo, the inferences of QSO black holes in this mass range lead to an upper limit on the central dark matter densities of their host haloes of ${\rho }_0<250M_{\odot }$pc${}^{-3}$. This limit scales inversely with the assumed central black hole mass. However, thinking of dark matter profiles as universal across galactic populations, as cosmological studies imply, we obtain a firm upper limit for the central density of dark matter in such structures.

5 pages, 2 figures, accepted as a letter in MNRAS

References in corpus (8)

• A Cosmological Framework for the Co-Evolution of Quasars, Supermassive Black Holes, and Elliptical Galaxies: I. Galaxy Mergers & Quasar Activity
• High-Resolution Rotation Curves and Galaxy Mass Models from THINGS
• Direct cosmological simulations of the growth of black holes and galaxies
• The Black Hole Mass, Stellar M/L, and Dark Halo in M87
• The virialized mass of dark matter haloes
• Observational Constraints on the Dependence of Radio-Quiet Quasar X-ray Emission on Black Hole Mass and Accretion Rate
• The dynamical structure of dark matter haloes
• Observed Properties of Dark Matter: dynamical studies of dSph galaxies

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Scalar Field Dark Matter: behavior around black holes
• Fuzzy dark matter black holes and droplets
• Dark matter concentrations in galactic nuclei according to polytropic models
• Horizon growth of supermassive black hole seeds fed with collisional dark matter
• Collisional dark matter density profiles around supermassive black holes
• Nuclear Activity In Isolated Galaxies
• Modelling the dynamical friction timescale of sinking satellite
• Unveiling Gargantua: A new search strategy for the most massive central cluster black holes