Black holes regulate cool gas accretion in massive galaxies

Abstract

The nucleus of almost all massive galaxies contains a supermassive black hole (BH). The feedback from the accretion of these BHs is often considered to have crucial roles in establishing the quiescence of massive galaxies, although some recent studies show that even galaxies hosting the most active BHs do not exhibit a reduction in their molecular gas reservoirs or star formation rates. Therefore, the influence of BHs on galaxy star formation remains highly debated and lacks direct evidence. Here, based on a large sample of nearby galaxies with measurements of masses of both BHs and atomic hydrogen (HI), the main component of the interstellar medium, we show that the HI gas mass to stellar masses ratio (${\mu }_{\mathrm{HI}}=M_{\mathrm{HI}}/M_{\star }$) is more strongly correlated with BH masses ($M_{\mathrm{BH}}$) than with any other galaxy parameters, including stellar mass, stellar mass surface density and bulge masses. Moreover, once the ${\mu }_{\mathrm{HI}}-M_{\mathrm{BH}}$ correlation is considered, ${\mu }_{\mathrm{HI}}$ loses dependence on other galactic parameters, demonstrating that $M_{\mathrm{BH}}$ serves as the primary driver of ${\mu }_{\mathrm{HI}}$. These findings provide important evidence for how the accumulated energy from BH accretion regulates the cool gas content in galaxies, by ejecting interstellar medium gas and/or suppressing gas cooling from the circumgalactic medium.

Published in Nature. Updated to match the accepted version

References in corpus (43)

• Galactic Stellar and Substellar Initial Mass Function
• Coevolution (Or Not) of Supermassive Black Holes and Host Galaxies
• Energy input from quasars regulates the growth and activity of black holes and their host galaxies
• The physical properties of star forming galaxies in the low redshift universe
• Observational Evidence of AGN Feedback
• Stellar Masses and Star Formation Histories for 10^5 Galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Nuclear Activity in Nearby Galaxies
• Galaxy Groups in the SDSS DR4: I. The Catalogue and Basic Properties
• Massive Molecular Outflows and Evidence for AGN Feedback from CO Observations
• HyperLEDA. III. The catalogue of extragalactic distances
• The Atlas3D project - XV. Benchmark for early-type galaxies scaling relations from 260 dynamical models: mass-to-light ratio, dark matter, Fundamental Plane and Mass Plane
• A Catalog of Bulge+Disk Decompositions and Updated Photometry for 1.12 Million Galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• xCOLD GASS: the complete IRAM-30m legacy survey of molecular gas for galaxy evolution studies
• Evidence of strong quasar feedback in the early Universe
• xGASS: Total cold gas scaling relations and molecular-to-atomic gas ratios of galaxies in the local Universe
• The role of black holes in galaxy formation and evolution
• A Link Between Star Formation Quenching and Inner Stellar Mass Density in SDSS Central Galaxies
• What turns galaxies off? The different morphologies of star-forming and quiescent galaxies since z~2 from CANDELS
• The SINFONI Black Hole Survey: The Black Hole Fundamental Plane revisited and the paths of (co-) evolution of supermassive black holes and bulges
• Revisiting the Cosmic Cooling Crisis
• Bulge mass is king: The dominant role of the bulge in determining the fraction of passive galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey
• Unification of the Fundamental Plane and Super-Massive Black Holes Masses
• The relationship between black hole mass and galaxy properties: Examining the black hole feedback model in IllustrisTNG
• The cold interstellar medium of galaxies in the Local Universe
• Quenching as a Contest between Galaxy Halos and their Central Black Holes
• Quiescence correlates strongly with directly-measured black hole mass in central galaxies
• Supermassive black holes as the regulators of star formation in central galaxies
• The mean star formation rates of unobscured QSOs: searching for evidence of suppressed or enhanced star formation
• AGN Feedback and Star Formation of Quasar Host Galaxies: Insights from the Molecular Gas
• HI-MaNGA: HI Followup for the MaNGA Survey
• The quenching of galaxies, bulges, and disks since cosmic noon: A machine learning approach for identifying causality in astronomical data
• HI-MaNGA: Tracing the physics of the neutral and ionized ISM with the second data release
• The fundamental signature of star formation quenching from AGN feedback: A critical dependence of quiescence on supermassive black hole mass not accretion rate
• No signs of star formation being regulated in the most luminous quasars at z~2 with ALMA
• CANDELS: Correlations of SEDs and Morphologies with Star-formation Status for Massive Galaxies at z ~ 2
• On the co-evolution of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies since z = 3
• What drives galaxy quenching? A deep connection between galaxy kinematics and quenching in the local Universe
• Galaxy groups in the 2MASS Redshift Survey
• The SAMI Galaxy Survey: the difference between ionised gas and stellar velocity dispersions
• Dissect two-halo galactic conformity effect for central galaxies: The dependence of star formation activities on the large-scale environment
• The Discovery of a Hidden Broad Line AGN in a Bulgeless Galaxy: Keck NIR Spectroscopic Observations of SDSS J085153.64+392611.76
• A universal relationship between stellar masses and binding energies of galaxies
• Galaxy quenching at the high redshift frontier: A fundamental test of cosmological models in the early universe with JWST-CEERS

Cited by in corpus (12)

• Gas outflows in two recently quenched galaxies at z = 4 and 7
• A census of quiescent galaxies across $0.5<z<8$ with JWST/MIRI: Mass-dependent number density evolution of quiescent galaxies in the early Universe
• Feedback from intermediate mass black holes on dwarf galaxy morphology at z=2
• Cosmic Vine: High abundance of massive galaxies and dark matter halos in a forming cluster at z=3.44
• The Detection Rate of Associated \mgii\ Absorption Lines in Quasars Depends on Their Radio Emission
• A Spatially Resolved Evolutionary Sequence of Multi-wavelength AGN Host Galaxies
• Magnetic Reconnection as a Potential Driver of X-ray Variability in Active Galactic Nuclei
• A Bending in the Size-mass Relation of Star-forming Galaxies across $0.5<z<6.0$ at a Critical Stellar Mass of $10^{10}{M}_{\odot }$ Revealed by JWST
• Dissecting the mass quenching in TNG50: Galaxy size determines the quenching mode
• Toward Understanding the Evolutionary Role of Star-forming Lenticular Galaxies: New HI Detections and Comparison with Quiescent S0s and Red Spirals
• Black Hole-Galaxy Correlations in Cluster Zoomed-in Simulations: GIZMO-SIMBA and TNG-Cluster
• Investigating the Impacts of AGN Activities on Dwarf Galaxies with FAST HI Observations