scholarly journals Forming bulges during galaxy minor mergers

2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (S245) ◽  
pp. 63-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. J. Cox ◽  
J. Younger ◽  
L. Hernquist ◽  
P. F. Hopkins

AbstractThe hierarchical formation of structure suggests that dark halos, and the galaxies they host, are shaped by their merging history. While the idea that mergers between galaxies of equal mass, i.e., major merger, produce elliptical galaxies has received considerable attention, he galaxies that result from minor merger, i.e., mergers between galaxies with a large mass ratio, is much less understood. We have performed a large number of numerical simulations of minor mergers, including cooling, star formation, and black hole growth in order to study this process in more detail. This talk will present some preliminary results of this study, and in particular, the morphology and kinematics of minor merger remnants.

2010 ◽  
Vol 726 (2) ◽  
pp. 57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mauricio Cisternas ◽  
Knud Jahnke ◽  
Katherine J. Inskip ◽  
Jeyhan Kartaltepe ◽  
Anton M. Koekemoer ◽  
...  

2016 ◽  
Vol 151 (5) ◽  
pp. 119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naveen Jingade ◽  
Tarun Deep Saini ◽  
Scott Tremaine

2020 ◽  
Vol 494 (4) ◽  
pp. 5713-5733 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart McAlpine ◽  
Chris M Harrison ◽  
David J Rosario ◽  
David M Alexander ◽  
Sara L Ellison ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT We investigate the connection between galaxy–galaxy mergers and enhanced black hole (BH) growth using the cosmological hydrodynamical eagle simulation. We do this via three methods of analysis, investigating: the merger fraction of AGN, the AGN fraction of merging systems, and the AGN fraction of galaxies with close companions. In each case, we find an increased abundance of AGN within merging systems relative to control samples of inactive or isolated galaxies (by up to a factor of ≈3 depending on the analysis method used), confirming that mergers are enhancing BH accretion rates for at least a subset of the galaxy population. The greatest excess of AGN triggered via a merger are found in lower mass (M* ∼ 1010 M⊙) gas rich (fgas > 0.2) central galaxies with lower mass BHs (MBH ∼ 107 M⊙) at lower redshifts (z < 1). We find no enhancement of AGN triggered via mergers in more massive galaxies (M* ≳ 1011 M⊙). The enhancement of AGN is not uniform throughout the phases of a merger, and instead peaks within the early remnants of merging systems (typically lagging ≈300 Myr post-coalescence of the two galaxies at z = 0.5). We argue that neither major ($M_{\mathrm{*,1}} / M_{\mathrm{*,2}} \ge \frac{1}{4}$) nor minor mergers ($\frac{1}{10} \lt M_{\mathrm{*,1}} / M_{\mathrm{*,2}} \lt \frac{1}{4}$) are statistically relevant for enhancing BH masses globally. Whilst at all redshifts the galaxies experiencing a merger have accretion rates that are on average 2–3 times that of isolated galaxies, the majority of mass that is accreted on to BHs occurs outside the periods of a merger. We compute that on average no more than 15 per cent of a BHs final day mass comes from the enhanced accretion rates triggered via a merger.


2016 ◽  
Vol 458 (2) ◽  
pp. 1402-1416 ◽  
Author(s):  
MaoSheng Liu ◽  
Tiziana Di Matteo ◽  
Yu Feng

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (S267) ◽  
pp. 273-282
Author(s):  
Andrew King

AbstractI review accretion and outflow in active galactic nuclei. Accreti4on appears to occur in a series of very small-scale, chaotic events, whose gas flows have no correlation with the large-scale structure of the galaxy or with each other. The accreting gas has extremely low specific angular momentum and probably represents only a small fraction of the gas involved in a galaxy merger, which may be the underlying driver.Eddington accretion episodes in AGN must be common in order for the supermassive black holes to grow. I show that they produce winds with velocities v ~ 0.1c and ionization parameters implying the presence of resonance lines of helium-like and hydrogen-like iron. The wind creates a strong cooling shock as it interacts with the interstellar medium of the host galaxy, and this cooling region may be observable in an inverse Compton continuum and lower-excitation emission lines associated with lower velocities. The shell of matter swept up by the shocked wind stalls unless the black hole mass has reached the value Mσ implied by the M–σ relation. Once this mass is reached, further black hole growth is prevented. If the shocked gas did not cool as asserted above, the resulting (“energy-driven”) outflow would imply a far smaller SMBH mass than actually observed. Minor accretion events with small gas fractions can produce galaxy-wide outflows, including fossil outflows in galaxies where there is little current AGN activity.


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