Abstract We present high-resolution, three-dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of the fueling of supermassive black holes in elliptical galaxies from a turbulent medium on galactic scales, taking M87* as a typical case. The simulations use a new GPU-accelerated version of the Athena++ AMR code, and they span more than six orders of magnitude in radius, reaching scales similar to that of the black hole horizon. The key physical ingredients are radiative cooling and a phenomenological heating model. We find that the accretion flow takes the form of multiphase gas at radii less than about a kpc. The cold gas accretion includes two dynamically distinct stages: the typical disk stage in which the cold gas resides in a rotationally supported disk, and relatively rare chaotic stages (≲10% of the time) in which the cold gas inflows via chaotic streams. Though cold gas accretion dominates the time-averaged accretion rate at intermediate radii, accretion at the smallest radii is dominated by hot virialized gas at most times. The accretion rate scales with radius as M ̇ ∝ r 1 / 2 when hot gas dominates, and we obtain M ̇ ≃ 10 − 4 – 10 − 3 M ⊙ yr − 1 near the event horizon, similar to what is inferred from EHT observations. The orientation of the cold gas disk can differ significantly on different spatial scales. We propose a subgrid model for accretion in lower-resolution simulations in which the hot gas accretion rate is suppressed relative to the Bondi rate by ∼ ( r g / r Bondi ) 1 / 2 . Our results can also provide more realistic initial conditions for simulations of black hole accretion at the event horizon scale.
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Dark matter heating of gas accreting onto Sgr A*
ABSTRACT We study effects of heating by dark matter (DM) annihilation on black hole gas accretion. We observe that, for reasonable assumptions about DM densities in spikes around supermassive black holes, as well as DM masses and annihilation cross-sections within the standard WIMP model, heating by DM annihilation may have an appreciable effect on the accretion on to Sgr A* in the Galactic Centre. Motivated by this observation we study the effects of such heating on Bondi accretion, i.e. spherically symmetric, steady-state Newtonian accretion on to a black hole. We consider different adiabatic indices for the gas, and different power-law exponents for the DM density profile. We find that typical transonic solutions with heating have a significantly reduced accretion rate. However, for many plausible parameters, transonic solutions do not exist, suggesting a breakdown of the underlying assumptions of steady-state Bondi accretion. Our findings indicate that heating by DM annihilation may play an important role in the accretion onto supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies, and may help explain the low accretion rate observed for Sgr A*.
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- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10168405
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
- Volume:
- 490
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 0035-8711
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 3414 to 3425
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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null (Ed.)ABSTRACT We revisit Bondi accretion – steady-state, adiabatic, spherical gas flow on to a Schwarzschild black hole at rest in an asymptotically homogeneous medium – for stiff polytropic equations of state (EOSs) with adiabatic indices Γ > 5/3. A general relativistic treatment is required to determine their accretion rates, for which we provide exact expressions. We discuss several qualitative differences between results for soft and stiff EOSs – including the appearance of a minimum steady-state accretion rate for EOSs with Γ ≥ 5/3 – and explore limiting cases in order to examine these differences. As an example, we highlight results for Γ = 2, which is often used in numerical simulations to model the EOS of neutron stars. We also discuss a special case with this index, the ultrarelativistic ‘causal’ EOS, P = ρ. The latter serves as a useful limit for the still undetermined neutron star EOS above nuclear density. The results are useful, for example, to estimate the accretion rate on to a mini-black hole residing at the centre of a neutron star.more » « less
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ABSTRACT The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration has produced the first resolved images of the supermassive black holes at the centre of our galaxy and at the centre of the elliptical galaxy M87. As both technology and analysis pipelines improve, it will soon become possible to produce spectral index maps of black hole accretion flows on event horizon scales. In this work, we predict spectral index maps of both M87* and Sgr A* by applying the general relativistic radiative transfer (GRRT) code ipole to a suite of general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations. We analytically show that the spectral index increases with increasing magnetic field strength, electron temperature, and optical depth. Consequently, spectral index maps grow more negative with increasing radius in almost all models, since all of these quantities tend to be maximized near the event horizon. Additionally, photon ring geodesics exhibit more positive spectral indices, since they sample the innermost regions of the accretion flow with the most extreme plasma conditions. Spectral index maps are sensitive to highly uncertain plasma heating prescriptions (the electron temperature and distribution function). However, if our understanding of these aspects of plasma physics can be tightened, even the spatially unresolved spectral index around 230 GHz can be used to discriminate between models. In particular, Standard and Normal Evolution (SANE) flows tend to exhibit more negative spectral indices than Magnetically Arrested Disc (MAD) flows due to differences in the characteristic magnetic field strength and temperature of emitting plasma.
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ABSTRACT Horizon-scale observations of the jetted active galactic nucleus M87 are compared with simulations spanning a broad range of dissipation mechanisms and plasma content in three-dimensional general relativistic flows around spinning black holes. Observations of synchrotron radiation from radio to X-ray frequencies can be compared with simulations by adding prescriptions specifying the relativistic electron-plus-positron distribution function and associated radiative transfer coefficients. A suite of time-varying simulations with various spins, plasma magnetizations and turbulent heating and equipartition-based emission prescriptions (and piecewise combinations thereof) is chosen to represent distinct possibilities for the M87 jet/accretion flow/black hole system. Simulation jet morphology, polarization, and variation are then ‘observed’ and compared with real observations to infer the rules that govern the polarized emissivity. Our models support several possible spin/emission model/plasma composition combinations supplying the jet in M87, whose black hole shadow has been observed down to the photon ring at 230 GHz by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). Net linear polarization and circular polarization constraints favour magnetically arrested disc (MAD) models whereas resolved linear polarization favours standard and normal evolution (SANE) in our parameter space. We also show that some MAD cases dominated by intrinsic circular polarization have near-linear V/I dependence on un-paired electron or positron content while SANE polarization exhibits markedly greater positron-dependent Faraday effects – future probes of the SANE/MAD dichotomy and plasma content with the EHT. This is the second work in a series also applying the ‘observing’ simulations methodology to near-horizon regions of supermassive black holes in Sgr A* and 3C 279.
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stz2781
