Hydrodynamical Simulations of the Triggering of Nuclear Activities by Minor Mergers of Galaxies

Abstract

Major mergers of galaxies are considered to be an efficient way to trigger Active Galactic Nuclei and are thought to be responsible for the phenomenon of quasars. This has however recently been challenged by observations of a large number of low luminosity Active Galactic Nuclei at low redshift ($z\lesssim 1$) without obvious major merger signatures. Minor mergers are frequently proposed to explain the existence of these Active Galactic Nuclei. In this paper, we perform nine high resolution hydrodynamical simulations of minor galaxy mergers and investigate whether nuclear activities can be efficiently triggered by minor mergers, by setting various properties for the progenitor galaxies of those mergers. We find that minor galaxy merger scan activate the massive black hole in the primary galaxy with an Eddington ratio of $f_{\mathrm{Edd}}>0.01$ and $>0.05$ (or a bolometric luminosity $>10^{43}$ and $>10^{44}\mathrm{erg}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$) with a duration of $2.71$ and $0.49$ Gyr (or $2.69$ and $0.19$ Gyr), respectively. The nuclear activity of primary galaxy strongly depends on the nucleus separation, the nucleus is more active as the two nuclei approach to each other. Dual Active Galactic Nuclei systems can still possibly form by minor mergers of galaxies, the time period for dual Active Galactic Nuclei is only $\sim 0.011$ Gyr and $\sim 0.017$ Gyr with Eddington ratio of $f_{\mathrm{Edd}}>0.05$ and bolometric luminosity $>10^{44}\mathrm{erg}{\mathrm{s}}^{-1}$. This time period is typically shorter than that of dual Active Galactic Nuclei induced by galaxy major mergers.

RAA published, 18 pages, 7 figures. Format problems fixed

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