Modeling Hot Gas Flow in the Low-Luminosity Active Galactic Nucleus of NGC3115

Abstract

Based on the dynamical black hole (BH) mass estimates, NGC3115 hosts the closest billion solar mass BH. Deep studies of the center revealed a very underluminous active galactic nucleus (AGN) immersed in an old massive nuclear star cluster. Recent $1$~Ms \textit{Chandra} X-ray visionary project observations of the NGC3115 nucleus resolved hot tenuous gas, which fuels the AGN. In this paper we connect the processes in the nuclear star cluster with the feeding of the supermassive BH. We model the hot gas flow sustained by the injection of matter and energy from the stars and supernova explosions. We incorporate electron heat conduction as the small-scale feedback mechanism, the gravitational pull of the stellar mass, cooling, and Coulomb collisions. Fitting simulated X-ray emission to the spatially and spectrally resolved observed data, we find the best-fitting solutions with ${\chi }^2/dof=1.00$ for $dof=236$ both with and without conduction. The radial modeling favors a low BH mass $<1.3\times 10^9{M}_{\odot }$. The best-fitting supernova rate and the best-fitting mass injection rate are consistent with their expected values. The stagnation point is at $r_{\mathrm{st}}\lesssim 1$arcsec, so that most of gas, including the gas at a Bondi radius $r_B=2-4$arcsec, outflows from the region. We put an upper limit on the accretion rate at $2\times 10^{-3}{M}_{\odot }{\mathrm{yr}}^{-1}$. We find a shallow density profile $n\propto r^{-\beta }$ with $\beta \approx 1$ over a large dynamic range. This density profile is determined in the feeding region $0.5-10$arcsec as an interplay of four processes and effects: (1) the radius-dependent mass injection, (2) the effect of the galactic gravitational potential, (3) the accretion flow onset at $r\lesssim 1$arcsec, and (4) the outflow at $r\gtrsim 1$arcsec. The gas temperature is close to the virial temperature $T_v$ at any radius.

14 pages, 9 figures, accepted to ApJ

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Cited by in corpus (9)

• The role of feedback in accretion on Low Luminosity AGN: Sgr A* case study
• Circumnuclear Media of Quiescent Supermassive Black Holes
• Local Active Galactic Nuclei with Large Broad-Hα Variability Reside in Red Galaxies
• Efficiency of black hole formation via collisions in stellar systems: An analysis of data from simulations and observations
• Multi-phase environment of compact galactic nuclei: the role of the Nuclear Star Cluster
• A Generalised Bondi Accretion Model for the Galactic Centre
• A fast and accurate method to compute the mass return from multiple stellar populations
• Hot Gas Flows on Parsec Scale in the Low-Luminosity Active Galactic Nucleus NGC 3115
• Evaluating the efficacy of a data cube treatment procedure for kinematic analyses: application to NGC 3115 and NGC 4699