Ejective and preventative: the IllustrisTNG black hole feedback and its effects on the thermodynamics of the gas within and around galaxies
ABSTRACT Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) that reside at the centres of galaxies can inject vast amounts of energy into the surrounding gas and are thought to be a viable mechanism to quench star formation in massive galaxies. Here, we study the $10^{9-12.5}\, \mathrm{M_\odot }$ stellar mass central galaxy population of the IllustrisTNG simulation, specifically the TNG100 and TNG300 volumes at z = 0, and show how the three components – SMBH, galaxy, and circumgalactic medium (CGM) – are interconnected in their evolution. We find that gas entropy is a sensitive diagnostic of feedback injection. In particular, we demonstrate how the onset of the low-accretion black hole (BH) feedback mode, realized in the IllustrisTNG model as a kinetic, BH-driven wind, leads not only to star formation quenching at stellar masses $\gtrsim 10^{10.5}\, \mathrm{M_\odot }$ but also to a change in thermodynamic properties of the (non-star-forming) gas, both within the galaxy and beyond. The IllustrisTNG kinetic feedback from SMBHs increases the average gas entropy, within the galaxy and in the CGM, lengthening typical gas cooling times from $10\!-\!100\, \mathrm{Myr}$ to $1\!-\!10\, \mathrm{Gyr}$, effectively ceasing ongoing star formation and inhibiting radiative cooling and future gas accretion. In practice, the same active galactic nucleus more »
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Publication Date:
NSF-PAR ID:
10283701
Journal Name:
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume:
499
Issue:
1
Page Range or eLocation-ID:
768 to 792
ISSN:
0035-8711
Previous studies of fueling black holes in galactic nuclei have argued (on scales ${\sim}0.01{-}1000\,$pc) accretion is dynamical with inflow rates $\dot{M}\sim \eta \, M_{\rm gas}/t_{\rm dyn}$ in terms of gas mass Mgas, dynamical time tdyn, and some η. But these models generally neglected expulsion of gas by stellar feedback, or considered extremely high densities where expulsion is inefficient. Studies of star formation, however, have shown on sub-kpc scales the expulsion efficiency fwind = Mejected/Mtotal scales with the gravitational acceleration as $(1-f_{\rm wind})/f_{\rm wind}\sim \bar{a}_{\rm grav}/\langle \dot{p}/m_{\ast }\rangle \sim \Sigma _{\rm eff}/\Sigma _{\rm crit}$ where $\bar{a}_{\rm grav}\equiv G\, M_{\rm tot}(\lt r)/r^{2}$ and $\langle \dot{p}/m_{\ast }\rangle$ is the momentum injection rate from young stars. Adopting this as the simplest correction for stellar feedback, $\eta \rightarrow \eta \, (1-f_{\rm wind})$, we show this provides a more accurate description of simulations with stellar feedback at low densities. This has immediate consequences, predicting the slope and normalization of the MBH − σ and MBH − Mbulge relation, LAGN −SFR relations, and explanations for outliers in compact Es. Most strikingly, because star formation simulations show expulsion is efficient (fwind ∼ 1) below total-mass surface density $M_{\rm tot}/\pi \, r^{2}\lt \Sigma _{\rm crit}\sim 3\times 10^{9}\, \mathrm{M}_{\odotmore » 2. ABSTRACT We use the simba cosmological galaxy formation simulation to investigate the relationship between major mergers ($\lesssim$4:1), starbursts, and galaxy quenching. Mergers are identified via sudden jumps in stellar mass M* well above that expected from in situ star formation, while quenching is defined as going from specific star formation rate (sSFR)$\gt t_{\rm H}^{-1}$to$\lt 0.2t_{\rm H}^{-1}$, where tH is the Hubble time. At z ≈ 0–3, mergers show ∼2–3× higher SFR than a mass-matched sample of star-forming galaxies, but globally represent$\lesssim 1{{\ \rm per\ cent}}$of the cosmic SF budget. At low masses, the increase in SFR in mergers is mostly attributed to an increase in the H2 content, but for$M_*\gtrsim 10^{10.5} \,\mathrm{ M}_{\odot }$mergers also show an elevated star formation efficiency suggesting denser gas within merging galaxies. The merger rate for star-forming galaxies shows a rapid increase with redshift, ∝(1 + z)3.5, but the quenching rate evolves much more slowly, ∝(1 + z)0.9; there are insufficient mergers to explain the quenching rate at$z\lesssim 1.5$. simba first quenches galaxies at$z\gtrsim 3$, with a number density in good agreement with observations. The quenching time-scales τq are strongly bimodal, with ‘slow’ quenchings (τq ∼ 0.1tH) dominating overall,more » 3. ABSTRACT We explore implications of a range of black hole (BH) seeding prescriptions on the formation of the brightest$z$≳ 6 quasars in cosmological hydrodynamic simulations. The underlying galaxy formation model is the same as in the IllustrisTNG simulations. Using constrained initial conditions, we study the growth of BHs in rare overdense regions (forming$\gtrsim 10^{12}\, {\rm M}_{\odot }\,h^{-1}$haloes by$z$= 7) using a (9 Mpc h−1)3 simulated volume. BH growth is maximal within haloes that are compact and have a low tidal field. For these haloes, we consider an array of gas-based seeding prescriptions wherein$M_{\mathrm{seed}}=10^4\!-\!10^6\, {\rm M}_{\odot }\,h^{-1}$seeds are inserted in haloes above critical thresholds for halo mass and dense, metal-poor gas mass (defined as$\tilde{M}_{\mathrm{h}}$and$\tilde{M}_{\mathrm{sf,mp}}$, respectively, in units of Mseed). We find that a seed model with$\tilde{M}_{\mathrm{sf,mp}}=5$and$\tilde{M}_{\mathrm{h}}=3000$successfully produces a$z$∼ 6 quasar with$\sim 10^9\, {\rm M}_{\odot }$mass and ∼1047 erg s−1 luminosity. BH mergers play a crucial role at$z$≳ 9, causing an early boost in BH mass at a time when accretion-driven BH growth is negligible. With more stringent seeding conditions (e.g.$\tilde{M}_{\mathrm{sf,mp}}=1000$), the relative paucity of BH seeds results in a much lower merger rate. In this case,$z$more » 4. ABSTRACT We present and study a large suite of high-resolution cosmological zoom-in simulations, using the FIRE-2 treatment of mechanical and radiative feedback from massive stars, together with explicit treatment of magnetic fields, anisotropic conduction and viscosity (accounting for saturation and limitation by plasma instabilities at high β), and cosmic rays (CRs) injected in supernovae shocks (including anisotropic diffusion, streaming, adiabatic, hadronic and Coulomb losses). We survey systems from ultrafaint dwarf ($M_{\ast }\sim 10^{4}\, \mathrm{M}_{\odot }$,$M_{\rm halo}\sim 10^{9}\, \mathrm{M}_{\odot }$) through Milky Way/Local Group (MW/LG) masses, systematically vary uncertain CR parameters (e.g. the diffusion coefficient κ and streaming velocity), and study a broad ensemble of galaxy properties [masses, star formation (SF) histories, mass profiles, phase structure, morphologies, etc.]. We confirm previous conclusions that magnetic fields, conduction, and viscosity on resolved ($\gtrsim 1\,$pc) scales have only small effects on bulk galaxy properties. CRs have relatively weak effects on all galaxy properties studied in dwarfs ($M_{\ast } \ll 10^{10}\, \mathrm{M}_{\odot }$,$M_{\rm halo} \lesssim 10^{11}\, \mathrm{M}_{\odot }$), or at high redshifts (z ≳ 1–2), for any physically reasonable parameters. However, at higher masses ($M_{\rm halo} \gtrsim 10^{11}\, \mathrm{M}_{\odot }$) and z ≲ 1–2, CRs can suppress SF and stellar masses by factorsmore » 5. ABSTRACT We introduce the thesan project, a suite of large volume ($L_\mathrm{box} = 95.5 \, \mathrm{cMpc}$) radiation-magnetohydrodynamic simulations that simultaneously model the large-scale statistical properties of the intergalactic medium during reionization and the resolved characteristics of the galaxies responsible for it. The flagship simulation has dark matter and baryonic mass resolutions of$3.1 \times 10^6\, {\rm M_\odot }$and$5.8 \times 10^5\, {\rm M_\odot }\$, respectively. The gravitational forces are softened on scales of 2.2 ckpc with the smallest cell sizes reaching 10 pc at z = 5.5, enabling predictions down to the atomic cooling limit. The simulations use an efficient radiation hydrodynamics solver (arepo-rt) that precisely captures the interaction between ionizing photons and gas, coupled to well-tested galaxy formation (IllustrisTNG) and dust models to accurately predict the properties of galaxies. Through a complementary set of medium resolution simulations we investigate the changes to reionization introduced by different assumptions for ionizing escape fractions, varying dark matter models, and numerical convergence. The fiducial simulation and model variations are calibrated to produce realistic reionization histories that match the observed evolution of the global neutral hydrogen fraction and electron scattering optical depth to reionization. They also match a wealth of high-redshift observationally inferred data, including themore »