Pedro R. Capelo

Growth and activity of black holes in galaxy mergers with varying mass ratios

We study supermassive black holes (BHs) in merging galaxies, using a suite of hydrodynamical simulations with very high spatial (~10 pc) and temporal (~1 Myr) resolution, where we vary the initial mass ratio, the orbital configuration, and the gas fraction. (i) We address the question of when and why, during a merger, increased BH accretion occurs, quantifying gas inflows and BH accretion rates. (ii) We also quantify the relative effectiveness in inducing AGN activity of merger-related versus secular-related causes, by studying different stages of the encounter: the stochastic (or early) stage, the (proper) merger stage, and the remnant (or late) stage. (iii) We assess which galaxy mergers preferentially enhance BH accretion, finding that the initial mass ratio is the most important factor. (iv) We study the evolution of the BH masses, finding that the BH mass contrast tends to decrease in minor mergers and to increase in major mergers. This effect hints at the existence of a preferential range of mass ratios for BHs in the final pairing stages. (v) In both merging and dynamically quiescent galaxies, the gas accreted by the BH is not necessarily the gas with

Growing black holes and galaxies: black hole accretion versus star formation rate

low

How robust are the constraints on cosmology and galaxy evolution from the lens-redshift test?

angular momentum, but the gas that

Comparison of black hole growth in galaxy mergers with gasoline and ramses

loses

Hydrostatic equilibrium profiles for gas in elliptical galaxies

angular momentum.

Galactic Angular Momentum in Cosmological Zoom-in Simulations. I. Disk and Bulge Components and the Galaxy–Halo Connection

We present a new suite of hydrodynamical simulations and use it to study, in detail, black hole and galaxy properties. The high time, spatial and mass resolution, and realistic orbits and mass ratios, down to 1:6 and 1:10, enable us to meaningfully compare star formation rate (SFR) and BH accretion rate (BHAR) timescales, temporal behaviour and relative magnitude. We find that (i) BHAR and galaxy-wide SFR are typically temporally uncorrelated, and have different variability timescales, except during the merger proper, lasting ~0.2-0.3 Gyr. BHAR and nuclear (<100 pc) SFR are better correlated, and their variability are similar. Averaging over time, the merger phase leads typically to an increase by a factor of a few in the BHAR/SFR ratio. (ii) BHAR and nuclear SFR are intrinsically proportional, but the correlation lessens if the long-term SFR is measured. (iii) Galaxies in the remnant phase are the ones most likely to be selected as systems dominated by an active galactic nucleus (AGN), because of the long time spent in this phase. (iv) The timescale over which a given diagnostic probes the SFR has a profound impact on the recovered correlations with BHAR, and on the interpretation of observational data.

Supermassive black hole pairs in clumpy galaxies at high redshift: delayed binary formation and concurrent mass growth

The redshift distribution of galaxy lenses in known gravitational lens systems provides a powerful test that can potentially discriminate amongst cosmological models. However, applications of this elegant test have been curtailed by two factors: our ignorance of how galaxies evolve with redshift, and the absence of methods to deal with the effect of incomplete information in lensing systems. In this paper, we investigate both issues in detail. We explore how to extract the properties of evolving galaxies, assuming that the cosmology is well determined by other techniques. We propose a new nested Monte Carlo method to quantify the effects of incomplete data. We apply the lens-redshift test to an improved sample of seventy lens systems derived from recent observations, primarily from the SDSS, SLACS and the CLASS surveys. We find that the limiting factor in applying the lens-redshift test derives from poor statistics, including incomplete information samples and biased sampling. Many lenses that uniformly sample the underlying true image separation distribution will be needed to use this test as a complementary method to measure the value of the cosmological constant or the properties of evolving galaxies. Planned future surveys by missions like the SNAP satellite or LSST are likely to usher in a new era for strong lensing studies that utilize this test. With expected catalogues of thousands of new strong lenses, the lens-redshift test could offer a powerful tool to probe cosmology as well as galaxy evolution.

A chemical model for the interstellar medium in galaxies

Supermassive black hole dynamics during galaxy mergers is crucial in determining the rate of black hole mergers and cosmic black hole growth. As simulations achieve higher resolution, it becomes important to assess whether the black hole dynamics is influenced by the treatment of the interstellar medium in different simulation codes. We compare simulations of black hole growth in galaxy mergers with two codes: the smoothed particle hydrodynamics code gasoline, and the adaptive mesh refinement code ramses. We seek to identify predictions of these models that are robust despite differences in hydrodynamic methods and implementations of subgrid physics. We find that the general behavior is consistent between codes. Black hole accretion is minimal while the galaxies are well-separated (and even as they fly by within 10 kpc at the first pericenter). At late stages, when the galaxies pass within a few kpc, tidal torques drive nuclear gas inflow that triggers bursts of black hole accretion accompanied by star formation. We also note quantitative discrepancies that are model dependent: our ramses simulations show less star formation and black hole growth, and a smoother gas distribution with larger clumps and filaments than our gasoline simulations. We attribute these differences primarily to the subgrid models for black hole fueling, feedback, and gas thermodynamics. The main conclusion is that differences exist quantitatively between codes, and this should be kept in mind when making comparisons with observations. However, both codes capture the same dynamical behaviors in terms of triggering black hole accretion, star formation, and black hole dynamics, which is reassuring.

Shocks and angular momentum flips: a different path to feeding the nuclear regions of merging galaxies

We present an analytic formulation for the equilibrium gas density profile of early-type galaxies that explicitly includes the contribution of stars in the gravitational potential. We build a realistic model for an isolated elliptical galaxy and explore the equilibrium gas configurations as a function of multiple parameters. For an assumed central gas temperature k B T 0 = 0.6 keV, we find that neglecting the gravitational effects of stars, which can contribute substantially in the innermost regions, leads to an underestimate of the enclosed baryonic gas mass by up to ~65 per cent at the effective radius and by up to ~15 per cent at the Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) scale radius, depending on the stellar baryon fraction. This formula is therefore important for estimating the baryon fraction in an unbiased fashion. These new hydrostatic equilibrium solutions, derived for the isothermal and polytropic cases, can also be used to generate more realistic initial conditions for simulations of elliptical galaxies. Moreover, the new formulation is relevant when interpreting X-ray data. We compare our composite isothermal model to the standard β-model used to fit X-ray observations of early-type galaxies, to determine the value of the NFW scale radius r s . Assuming a 10 per cent stellar baryon fraction, we find that the exclusion of stars from the gravitational potential leads to (i) an underestimate of r s by ~80 per cent and (ii) an overestimate of the enclosed dark matter at r s by a factor of ~2, compared to the equivalent β-model fit results when stars are not taken into account. For higher stellar mass fractions, a β-model is unable to accurately reproduce our solution, indicating that when the observed surface brightness profile of an isolated elliptical galaxy is found to be well fitted by a β-model, the stellar mass fraction cannot be much greater than ~10 per cent.

A survey of dual active galactic nuclei in simulations of galaxy mergers: frequency and properties

We investigate the angular momentum evolution of four disk galaxies residing in Milky-Way–sized halos formed in cosmological zoom-in simulations with various sub-grid physics and merging histories. We decompose these galaxies, kinematically and photometrically, into their disk and bulge components. The simulated galaxies and their components lie on the observed sequences in the j *–M * diagram, relating the specific angular momentum and mass of the stellar component. We find that galaxies in low-density environments follow the relation