Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: We use multi-scale SPH simulations to follow the inflow of gas from galactic scales to <0.1pc, where the gas begins to resemble a traditional Keplerian accretion disk. The key ingredients are gas, stars, black holes (BHs), self-gravity, star formation, and stellar feedback. We use ~100 simulations to survey a large parameter space of galaxy properties and subgrid models for the ISM physics. We generate initial conditions for our simulations of galactic nuclei (~10pc, our simulations resemble the 'bars within bars' model, but the gas exhibits diverse morphologies, including spirals, rings, clumps, and bars; their duty cycle is modest, complicating attempts to correlate BH accretion with nuclear morphology. At ~1-10pc, the gravitational potential becomes dominated by the BH and bar-like modes are no longer present. However, the gas becomes unstable to a standing, eccentric disk or a single-armed spiral mode (m=1), driving the gas to sub-pc scales. Proper treatment of this mode requires including star formation and the self-gravity of both the stars and gas. We predict correlations between BHAR and SFR at different galactic nuclei: nuclear SF is more tightly coupled to AGN activity, but correlations exist at all scales.
Authors: Philip F. Hopkins, Eliot Quataert
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2951145575