A fundamental plane of black hole accretion at millimetre wavelengths

Journal article

We report the discovery of the ‘mm fundamental plane of black hole accretion’, which is a tight correlation between the nuclear 1 mm luminosity (L_{ν, mm}), the intrinsic 2–10 keV X-ray luminosity (L_{X, 2–10}) and the supermassive black hole (SMBH) mass (M_BH) with an intrinsic scatter (σ_int) of 0.40 dex. The plane is found for a sample of 48 nearby galaxies, most of which are low-luminosity active galactic nuclei. Combining these sources with a sample of high-luminosity (quasar-like) nearby AGN, we show that the plane still holds. We also find that M_BH correlates with L_{ν, mm} at a highly significant level, although such correlation is less tight than the mm fundamental plane (σ_int = 0.51 dex). Crucially, we show that spectral energy distribution (SED) models for both advection-dominated accretion flows (ADAFs) and compact jets can explain the existence of these relations, which are not reproduced by the standard torus-thin accretion disc models usually associated to quasar-like AGN. The ADAF models reproduces the observed relations somewhat better than those for compact jets, although neither provides a perfect fit. Our findings thus suggest that radiatively inefficient accretion processes such as those in ADAFs or compact (and thus possibly young) jets may play a key role in both low- and high-luminosity AGN. This mm fundamental plane also offers a new, rapid method to (indirectly) estimate SMBH masses.

Authors: Ruffa, I; Davis, TA; Elford, JS; Bureau, M; Cappellari, M

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters
• Volume: 528
• Issue: 1
• Pages: L76-L82
• Publication date: 2023-12-05
• Acceptance date: 2023-11-01
• DOI: 10.1093/mnrasl/slad167
• EISSN: 1745-3933
• ISSN: 1745-3925
• Language: English
• Keywords: black hole physics; galaxies: active; submillimetre: galaxies; X-rays: galaxies; galaxies: nuclei