Overmassive and Undermassive Massive Black Holes: The Role of Environment and Gravitational-Wave Recoils

Abstract

Understanding the connection between galaxy properties and their central massive black holes (MBHs) is key to unveiling their co-evolution. We use the $\mathtt{L}-\mathtt{Galaxies}-BH$ semi-analytical model and the $\mathtt{Millennium}$ suite of simulations to investigate the physical origin of galaxies hosting overmassive and undermassive MBHs with respect to the $M_{\mathrm{BH}}-M_{\ast }$ relation, across stellar mass and cosmic time. We find that distinct evolutionary pathways drive different offsets from the scaling relation. Overmassive MBHs are primarily associated with galaxies that experienced enhanced merger history and secular activity. At $z>4$, this activity often leads to early, rapid MBH growth, frequently involving super-Eddington accretion episodes. At low redshift, a minority of overmassive systems ($20\%$) instead arise from environmental effects that reduce the stellar mass of the host, shifting galaxies above the relation without requiring additional MBH growth. Undermassive MBHs originate from two main channels. In massive galaxies, gravitational recoil following MBH mergers can eject the central MBH, temporarily leaving the galaxy without a nucleus. During this phase, MBHs coming from previous galaxy mergers can become the new central MBHs, but their masses remain below the expected ones from the scaling relation, as they never co-evolved with their new host galaxy. In low-mass galaxies ($M_{\ast }<10^9{M}_{\odot }$), undermassive MBHs are more commonly linked to a quiescent evolutionary history, with limited mergers and weak secular processes that suppress an efficient MBH growth. We therefore conclude that outliers of the $M_{\mathrm{BH}}-M_{\ast }$ do not arise from a single mechanism, but from the interplay between environmental effects, gravitational recoils, and diverse MBH fueling histories, whose relative importance varies with galaxy mass and redshift.

arXiv comment13 pages, 11 figures, Accepted to A&A

References in corpus (82)

• The Structure of Cold Dark Matter Halos
• Planck 2013 results. XVI. Cosmological parameters
• The cosmological simulation code GADGET-2
• A Fundamental Relation Between Supermassive Black Holes and Their Host Galaxies
• Coevolution (Or Not) of Supermassive Black Holes and Host Galaxies
• The Demography of Massive Dark Objects in Galaxy Centres
• The many lives of active galactic nuclei: cooling flows, black holes and the luminosities and colours of galaxies
• A Relationship Between Nuclear Black Hole Mass and Galaxy Velocity Dispersion
• Energy input from quasars regulates the growth and activity of black holes and their host galaxies
• Populating a cluster of galaxies - I. Results at z=0
• Central Masses and Broad-Line Region Sizes of Active Galactic Nuclei. II. A Homogeneous Analysis of a Large Reverberation-Mapping Database
• The Relation between Black Hole Mass, Bulge Mass, and Near-Infrared Luminosity
• On the Black Hole Mass - Bulge Mass Relation
• The NANOGrav 15-year Data Set: Evidence for a Gravitational-Wave Background
• Determining Central Black Hole Masses in Distant Active Galaxies and Quasars. II. Improved Optical and UV Scaling Relationships
• Search for an isotropic gravitational-wave background with the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array
• Simba: Cosmological Simulations with Black Hole Growth and Feedback
• An Observational Determination of the Bolometric Quasar Luminosity Function
• The second data release from the European Pulsar Timing Array III. Search for gravitational wave signals
• First Results from the TNG50 Simulation: Galactic outflows driven by supernovae and black hole feedback
• Modeling the Panchromatic Spectral Energy Distributions of Galaxies
• First Results from the TNG50 Simulation: The evolution of stellar and gaseous disks across cosmic time
• Resolving Cosmic Structure Formation with the Millennium-II Simulation
• Relations Between Central Black Hole Mass and Total Galaxy Stellar Mass in the Local Universe
• Active Galactic Nuclei as scaled-up Galactic black holes
• Galaxy formation in the Planck Cosmology - I. Matching the observed evolution of star formation rates, colours and stellar masses
• Toward the Standard Population Synthesis Model of the X-Ray Background: Evolution of X-Ray Luminosity and Absorption Functions of Active Galactic Nuclei Including Compton-Thick Populations
• Binary Black Hole Accretion From a Circumbinary Disk: Gas Dynamics Inside the Central Cavity
• JADES. The diverse population of infant Black Holes at 4<z<11: merging, tiny, poor, but mighty
• A Correlation between Galaxy Light Concentration and Supermassive Black Hole Mass
• Accretion into the Central Cavity of a Circumbinary Disk
• The cosmic evolution of massive black holes in the Horizon-AGN simulation
• The evolution of massive black holes and their spins in their galactic hosts
• Super-Critical Growth of Massive Black Holes from Stellar-Mass Seeds
• The black hole mass -- stellar velocity dispersion correlation: bulges versus pseudobulges
• The dynamical evolution of massive black hole binaries - II. Self-consistent N-body integrations
• The Dynamics of Sinking Satellites Around Disk Galaxies: A Poor Man's Alternative to High-Resolution Numerical Simulations
• JWST CEERS & JADES Active Galaxies at z = 4-7 Violate the Local $M_{\bullet }-M_{\star }$ Relation at $>3\sigma$: Implications for Low-Mass Black Holes and Seeding Models
• Predicting the direction of the final spin from the coalescence of two black holes
• Journey to the M_BH -sigma relation: the fate of low mass black holes in the Universe
• Gravitational Recoil From Accretion-Aligned Black-Hole Binaries
• AGN feedback and triggering of star formation in galaxies
• Quasars Are Not Light-Bulbs: Testing Models of Quasar Lifetimes with the Observed Eddington Ratio Distribution
• Supermassive black holes in cosmological simulations I: M_BH-M_star relation and black hole mass function
• Dual black holes in merger remnants. II: spin evolution and gravitational recoil
• The evolution of active galactic nuclei and their spins
• Scattering experiments meet N-body I: a practical recipe for the evolution of massive black hole binaries in stellar environments
• Recoiling Black Holes in Merging Galaxies: Relationship to AGN Lifetimes, Starbursts, and the M-sigma Relation
• Evolution in the black hole mass-bulge mass relation: a theoretical perspective
• Supermassive black holes and their host spheroids II. The red and blue sequence in the $M_{\mathrm{BH}}-M_{\ast ,\mathrm{sph}}$ diagram
• Orbital Evolution of Equal-mass Eccentric Binaries due to a Gas Disk: Eccentric Inspirals and Circular Outspirals
• No significant evolution of relations between Black hole mass and Galaxy total stellar mass up to z~2.5
• Detection of stellar light from quasar host galaxies at redshifts above 6
• L-GALAXIES 2020: Spatially resolved cold gas phases, star formation and chemical enrichment in galactic discs
• Black Hole-Galaxy Correlations without Self-Regulation
• Constraining sub-Parsec Binary Supermassive Black Holes in Quasars with Multi-Epoch Spectroscopy. I. The General Quasar Population
• Post-Newtonian evolution of massive black hole triplets in galactic nuclei -- II. Survey of the parameter space
• Linking galaxy structural properties and star formation activity to black hole activity with IllustrisTNG
• Massive black hole evolution models confronting the n-Hz amplitude of the stochastic gravitational wave background
• Black-hole-regulated star formation in massive galaxies
• From galactic nuclei to the halo outskirts: tracing supermassive black holes across cosmic history and environments
• Scaling relations between black holes and their host galaxies: comparing theoretical and observational measurements, and the impact of selection effects
• Overmassive black holes in dwarf galaxies out to z$\sim$0.9 in the VIPERS survey
• The M_bh-sigma diagram, and the offset nature of barred active galaxies
• Sustained super-Eddington accretion in high-redshift quasars
• Missing black holes in brightest cluster galaxies as evidence for the occurrence of superkicks in nature
• Multi-flavour SMBH seeding and evolution in cosmological environments
• Co-evolution of black hole accretion and star formation in galaxies up to z=3.5
• The build-up of pseudobulges in a hierarchical universe
• Black hole growth and AGN feedback under clumpy accretion
• BlueTides simulation: establishing black hole-galaxy relations at high-redshift
• Do Nuclear Star Clusters and Black Holes Follow the Same Host-Galaxy Correlations?
• Overmassive black holes at cosmic noon: linking the local and the high-redshift Universe
• Linking the fate of massive black hole binaries to the active galactic nuclei luminosity function
• A candidate runaway supermassive black hole identified by shocks and star formation in its wake
• On the relation between the mass of Compact Massive Objects and their host galaxies
• A search for active galactic nuclei in low-mass compact galaxies
• Properties and merger signatures of galaxies hosting LISA coalescing massive black hole binaries
• Unveiling the hosts of parsec-scale massive black hole binaries: morphology and electromagnetic signatures
• Dark-ages reionization and galaxy formation simulation -- XVIII. The high-redshift evolution of black holes and their host galaxies
• Over-massive Central Black Holes in the Cosmological Simulations ASTRID and Illustris TNG50
• Wandering and escaping: recoiling massive black holes in cosmological simulations

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Gravitational Wave Measurement of the $M_{\mathrm{BH}}$-$M_{\mathrm{bulge}}$ Intrinsic Scatter at High Redshift