Destruction of the central black hole gas reservoir through head-on galaxy collisions
arXiv:2012.05700 · doi:10.1038/s41550-020-01286-9
Abstract
A massive black hole exists in almost every galaxy. They occasionally radiate a vast amount of light by releasing gravitational energy of accreting gas, with a cumulative active period of only a few years, so-called the duty cycle of the Active Galactic Nuclei. Namely, many galaxies today host a starving massive black hole. Although galaxy collisions have been thought to enhance nucleus activity, the origin of the duty cycle, especially the shutdown process, is a still critical issue. Here we show that galaxy collisions are also capable of suppressing black hole fueling by using an analytic model and three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations, applying the well-determined parameter sets for the galactic collision in the Andromeda galaxy. Our models demonstrate that a central collision of galaxies can strip the torus-shaped gas surrounding the massive black hole, the putative fueling source. The derived condition for switching-off the black hole fueling indicates that a significant fraction of currently bright nuclei can become inactive, reminiscent of fading/dying active nucleus phenomena associated with galaxy merging events. Galaxy collisions may therefore be responsible both for switching-off and turning-on the nucleus activity, depending on the collision orbit (head-on or far-off-centre).
41 pages, 10 figures, published in Nature Astronomy (read-only access is freely available at https://rdcu.be/cebgO)
References in corpus (18)
- The mass distribution and gravitational potential of the Milky Way
- Trigonometric Parallaxes of Massive Star Forming Regions: VI. Galactic Structure, Fundamental Parameters and Non-Circular Motions
- Detection of the Schwarzschild precession in the orbit of the star S2 near the Galactic centre massive black hole
- The bulk of the black hole growth since z~1 occurs in a secular universe: No major merger-AGN connection
- Radiatively Inefficient Accretion in Nearby Galaxies
- Radiative Transfer Modeling of Three-Dimensional Clumpy AGN Tori and its Application to NGC 1068
- Investigating the Andromeda Stream: III. A Young Shell System in M31
- On the difference of torus geometry between hidden and non-hidden broad line active galactic nuclei
- Fading AGN Candidates: AGN Histories and Outflow Signatures
- The Once and Future Andromeda Stream
- Comparing dynamical and photometric-stellar masses of early-type galaxies at z ~ 1
- Torus model properties of an ultra-hard X-ray selected sample of Seyfert galaxies
- Investigating the dusty torus of Seyfert galaxies using SOFIA/FORCAST photometry
- MOIRCS Deep Survey III: Active Galactic Nuclei in Massive Galaxies at z=2-4
- A 100 kpc nebula associated with the "Teacup" fading quasar
- Cosmological simulations of quasar fueling to sub-parsec scales using Lagrangian hyper-refinement
- Statistical properties of substructures around Milky Way-sized haloes and their implications for the formation of stellar streams
- Relics of Galaxy Merging: Observational Predictions for a Wandering Massive Black Hole and Accompanying Star Cluster in the Halo of M31