A Fundamental Line of Black Hole Activity

Abstract

Black hole systems with outflows are characterized by intrinsic physical quantities such as the outflow beam power, $L_j$, the bolometric accretion disk luminosity, $L_{bol}$, and black hole mass or Eddington luminosity, $L_{Edd}$. When these systems produce compact radio emission and X-ray emission, they can be placed on the fundamental plane (FP), an empirical relationship between compact radio luminosity, X-ray luminosity, and black hole mass. We consider a fundamental line (FL) of black hole activity written in terms of dimensionless intrinsic physical quantities: $\log ({\mathrm{L}}_{\mathrm{j}}/{\mathrm{L}}_{\mathrm{Edd}})=\mathrm{A}\log ({\mathrm{L}}_{\mathrm{bol}}/{\mathrm{L}}_{\mathrm{Edd}})+\mathrm{B}$ or equivalently $\log ({\mathrm{L}}_{\mathrm{j}}/{\mathrm{L}}_{\mathrm{bol}})=(\mathrm{A}-1)\log ({\mathrm{L}}_{\mathrm{bol}}/{\mathrm{L}}_{\mathrm{Edd}})+\mathrm{B}$, and show that the FP may be written in the form of the FL. The FL has a smaller dispersion than the FP suggesting the FP derives from the FL. Disk-dominated and jet-dominated systems have consistent best fit FL parameters suggesting they are governed by the same physics. There are sharp cutoffs at $L_{bol}/L_{Edd}\simeq 1$ and $L_j/L_{Edd}\simeq 0.2$, and no indication of a strong break as $L_{bol}/L_{Edd}\to 1$. Consistent values of $A$ are obtained for numerous samples including FRII sources, LINERS, AGNs with compact radio emission, and Galactic black holes, which indicate a weighted mean value of $A\simeq 0.45\pm 0.01$. The results suggest that a common physical mechanism related to the dimensionless bolometric luminosity of the disk controls the jet power relative to the disk power. The beam power $L_j$ can be obtained by combining FP best-fit parameters and compact radio luminosity for sources that fall on the FP.

Published in the Astrophysical Journal, 863, 117-122; 6 pages; 2 tables; 2 figures

References in corpus (11)

• Hot Accretion Flows Around Black Holes
• The Co-Evolution of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes: Insights from Surveys of the Contemporary Universe
• Radiatively Inefficient Accretion in Nearby Galaxies
• Measuring the kinetic power of AGN in the radio mode
• The Fundamental Plane of Accretion Onto Black Holes with Dynamical Masses
• Refining the fundamental plane of accreting black holes
• Jet-dominated advective systems: radio and X-ray luminosity dependence on the accretion rate
• Physical Properties of Very Powerful FRII Radio Galaxies
• The Fundamental Plane of Black Hole Activity in the Optical Band
• The mass fraction of AGN and the Fundamental Plane of black hole activity from a large X-ray selected sample of LINERs
• Spin Properties of Supermassive Black Holes with Powerful Outflows

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Black Hole Spin and Accretion Disk Magnetic Field Strength Estimates for more than 750 AGN and Multiple GBH
• The Powers of Relativistic Jets depend on the Spin of Accreting Supermassive Black Hole
• The Estimation of Fundamental Physics Parameters for Fermi-LAT Blazars
• Determination of magnetic field strength on the event horizon of supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei
• BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey -- XIII. The nature of the most luminous obscured AGN in the low-redshift universe
• Black Hole Mass Accretion Rates and Efficiency Factors for over 750 AGN and Multiple GBH
• Robust Supermassive Black Hole Spin Mass-Energy Characteristics: A New Method and Results
• AGN dichotomy beyond radio loudness: a Gaussian Mixture Model analysis