4.7 Article

Outflow-dominated emission from the quiescent massive black holes in NGC 4621 and NGC 4697

Journal

ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
Volume 675, Issue 2, Pages 1041-1047

Publisher

IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1086/527542

Keywords

galaxies : active; galaxies : individual (NGC 4621, NGC 4697); galaxies : nuclei; radio continuum : galaxies; X-rays : galaxies

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The nearby elliptical galaxies NGC 4621 and NGC 4697 each host a supermassive black hole with M-center dot > 10(8) M-circle dot. Analysis of archival Chandra data and new NRAO Very Large Array data shows that each galaxy contains a low-luminosity active galactic nucleus (LLAGN), identified as a faint, hard X-ray source that is astrometrically coincident with a faint 8.5-GHz source. The latter has a diameter less that 0.3 '' (26 pc for NGC 4621, 17 pc for NGC 4697). The black holes energizing these LLAGNs have Eddington ratios L(2-10 keV)/L(Edd) similar to 10(-9), placing them in the so-called quiescent regime. The emission from these quiescent black holes is radio-loud, with log R-X = log nu L-nu(8.5 GHz)/L(2-10 keV) similar to -2, suggesting the presence of a radio outflow. Also, application of the radio-X-ray-mass relation from Yuan & Cui for quiescent black holes predicts the observed radio luminosities nu L-nu(8.5 GHz) to within a factor of a few. Significantly, that relation invokes X-ray emission from the outflow rather than from an accretion flow. The faint, but detectable, emission from these two massive black holes is therefore consistent with being outflow-dominated. Observational tests of this finding are suggested.

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