Outflows in the gaseous disks of active galaxies and their impact on black hole scaling relations

To solve the still unsolved and fundamental problem of the role of active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback in the shaping of galaxies, we implement eda new physical treatment of AGN-driven winds into our semi-analytic model of galaxy formation. With each galaxy in our model, we associated solutions for the outflow expansion and the mass outflow rates in different directions, depending on the AGN luminosity, on the circular velocity of the host halo and on the gas content of the considered galaxy. We also assigned an effective radius to each galaxy that we derived from energy conservation during merger events, and a stellar velocity dispersion that we self-consistently computed via Jeans modeling. We derived all the main scaling relations between the black hole (BH) mass and the stellar mass of the host galaxy and of the bulge, the velocity dispersion, the host halo dark matter mass, and the star formation efficiency. We find that our improved AGN feedback mostly controls the dispersion around the relations, but it plays a subdominant role in shaping slopes and/or normalizations of the scaling relations. The models agree better with the available data when possible limited-resolution selection biases are included. The model does not indicate that any more fundamental galactic property is linked to BH mass. The velocity dispersion plays a similar role as stellar mass, which disagrees with current data. In line with other independent studies carried out on comprehensive semi-analytic and hydrodynamic galaxy-BH evolution models, our current results signal either that the current cosmological models of galaxy formation are inadequate in their reproduction of the local scaling relations in terms of both shape and residuals, and/or they indicate that the local sample of dynamically measured BHs is only incompletely known.

Automated summary

In order to address the role of active galactic nucleus (AGN) feedback in galaxy formation, researchers have introduced a new physical treatment of AGN-driven winds into a semi-analytic model. By considering various factors such as AGN luminosity, host halo circular velocity and gas content, they were able to establish solutions for outflow expansion and mass outflow rates. The improved AGN feedback was found to mostly control the dispersion around the scaling relations, but had a subdominant role in shaping the slopes and/or normalizations.