4.7 Article

AGN have underweight black holes and reach Eddington

Journal

MONTHLY NOTICES OF THE ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY
Volume 408, Issue 1, Pages L95-L98

Publisher

OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-3933.2010.00938.x

Keywords

accretion, accretion discs; black hole physics; galaxies: active; galaxies: formation

Funding

  1. STFC
  2. STFC [ST/H002235/1] Funding Source: UKRI
  3. Science and Technology Facilities Council [ST/H002235/1] Funding Source: researchfish

Ask authors/readers for more resources

Eddington outflows probably regulate the growth of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in active galactic nucleus (AGN). I show that effect of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability on these outflows means that SMBH masses are likely to be a factor of a few below the M-sigma relation in AGN. This agrees with the suggestion by Batcheldor that the M-sigma relation defines an upper limit to the black hole mass. I further argue that observed AGN black holes must spend much of their lives accreting at the Eddington rate. This is already suggested by the low observed AGN fraction among all galaxies despite the need to grow to the masses required by the Soltan relation and is reinforced by the suggested low SMBH masses. Most importantly, this is the simplest explanation of the recent discovery by Tombesi et al. of the widespread incidence of massive ultrafast X-ray outflows in a large sample of AGN.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.7
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available