Black hole wind speeds and the M-sigma relation

Abstract

We derive an M_bh-sigma relation between supermassive black hole mass and stellar velocity dispersion in galaxy bulges, that results from self-regulated, energy-conserving feedback. The relation is of the form M_bh v_w \propto sigma^5, where v_w is the velocity of the wind driven by the black hole. We take a sample of quiescent early-type galaxies and bulges with measured black hole masses and velocity dispersions and use our model to infer the wind speeds they would have had during an active phase. This approach, in effect, translates the scatter in the observed M_bh-sigma relation into a distribution of v_w. There are some remarkable similarities between the distribution of black hole wind speeds that we obtain and the distributions of outflow speeds observed in local AGN, including a comparable median of v_w = 0.035 c.

8 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in MNRAS

References in corpus (5)

• Revisiting the Scaling Relations of Black Hole Masses and Host Galaxy Properties
• Massive molecular outflows and negative feedback in ULIRGs observed by Herschel-PACS
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• Unravelling the complex structure of AGN-driven outflows: II. Photoionization and energetics
• Revealing the location and structure of the accretion disk-wind in PDS456
• Active Galactic Nuclei outflows in galaxy discs
• An evolutionary missing link? A modest-mass early-type galaxy hosting an over-sized nuclear black hole
• Determining AGN luminosity histories using present-day outflow properties: a neural-network based approach
• Long-term X-ray stability and UV variability of the ionized absorption in NGC 3783
• The $M-\sigma$ relation between supermassive black holes and their host galaxies
• Dark matter halos and the M-σrelation for supermassive black holes