Journal
MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 414, Issue 2, Pages 1127-1144Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2011.18444.x
Keywords
black hole physics; Galaxy: centre; galaxies: haloes; galaxies: high-redshift; Local Group
Categories
Funding
- ARC DP [DP0665574]
- NSF [AST-0847696]
- Direct For Mathematical & Physical Scien
- Division Of Astronomical Sciences [0847696] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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We explore the growth of <= 10(7) M-circle dot black holes that reside at the centres of spiral and field dwarf galaxies in a Local Group type of environment. We use merger trees from a cosmological N-body simulation known as Via Lactea 2 (VL-2) as a framework to test two merger-driven semi-analytic recipes for black hole growth that include dynamical friction, tidal stripping and gravitational wave recoil in over 20 000 merger tree realizations. First, we apply a Fundamental Plane limited (FPL) model to the growth of Sgr A*, which drives the central black hole to a maximum mass limited by the black hole Fundamental Plane after every merger. Next, we present a new model that allows for low-level prolonged gas accretion (PGA) during the merger. We find that both models can generate an Sgr A* mass black hole. We predict a population of massive black holes in local field dwarf galaxies - if the VL-2 simulation is representative of the growth of the Local Group, we predict up to 35 massive black holes (<= 10(6) M-circle dot) in Local Group field dwarfs. We also predict that hundreds of <= 10(5) M-circle dot black holes fail to merge, and instead populate the Milky Way halo, with the most massive of them at roughly the virial radius. In addition, we find that there may be hundreds of massive black holes ejected from their hosts into the nearby intergalactic medium due to gravitational wave recoil. We discuss how the black hole population in the Local Group field dwarfs may help to constrain the growth mechanism for Sgr A*.
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