Systematic collapse of the accretion disc across the supermassive black hole population

Hagen, Scott; Done, Chris; Silverman, John D; Li, Junyao; Liu, Teng; Ren, Wenke; Buchner, Johannes; Merloni, Andrea; Nagao, Tohru; Salvato, Mara

Abstract

The structure of the accretion flow on to supermassive black holes is not well understood. Standard disc models match to zeroth-order in predicting substantial energy dissipation within optically thick material producing a characteristic strong blue/ultraviolet continuum. However, they fail at reproducing more detailed comparisons to the observed spectral shapes along with their observed variability. Based on stellar mass black holes within our Galaxy, accretion discs should undergo a transition into an X-ray hot, radiatively inefficient flow, below a (mass scaled) luminosity of ∼ 0.02LEdd. While this has been seen in limited samples of nearby low-luminosity active galactic nuclei (AGN) and few rare changing-look AGN, it is not at all clear whether this transition is present in the wider AGN population across cosmic time. A key issue is the difficulty in disentangling a change in spectral state
from increased dust obscuration and/or host galaxy contamination, effectively drowning out the AGN emission. Here, we use the new eROSITA eFEDS Survey to identify unobscured AGN from their X-ray emission, matched to excellent optical imaging from Subaru’s Hyper Suprime-Cam; allowing the subtraction of the host galaxy contamination. The resulting, uncontaminated, AGN spectra reveal a smooth transition from a strongly disc-dominated state in bright AGN, to the collapse of the disc into an inefficient X-ray plasma in the low-luminosity AGN, with the transition occurring at ∼ 0.02LEdd; revealing fundamental aspects of accretion physics in AGN.

Citation

Hagen, S., Done, C., Silverman, J. D., Li, J., Liu, T., Ren, W., Buchner, J., Merloni, A., Nagao, T., & Salvato, M. (2024). Systematic collapse of the accretion disc across the supermassive black hole population. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 534(3), 2803-2818. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stae2272

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 1, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Oct 3, 2024
• Publication Date: 2024-11
• Deposit Date: Oct 29, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 29, 2024
• Journal: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Print ISSN: 0035-8711
• Electronic ISSN: 1365-2966
• Publisher: Royal Astronomical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 534
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 2803-2818
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stae2272
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2991072