The doughnut-shaped ring surrounding many supermassive black holes tells researchers about how briskly the area object is feeding and might change how the black gap is considered from Earth. Credit: ESA/NASA, the AVO venture and Paolo Padovani
Researchers use X-ray telescopes and a brand new information evaluation method to explain area objects.
Black holes with various mild signatures that had been as soon as considered the identical objects being considered from totally different angles are literally in numerous levels of the life cycle, based on a research led by Dartmouth scientists.
This new analysis on black holes often known as “active galactic nuclei,” or AGNs, says that it definitively reveals the necessity to revise the broadly used “unified model of AGN” that characterizes supermassive black holes as all having the identical properties.
The research gives solutions to a nagging area thriller and will permit researchers to create extra exact fashions concerning the evolution of the universe and the way black holes develop. It was revealed on July 15 in The Astrophysical Journal,
“These objects have mystified researchers for over a half-century,” stated Tonima Tasnim Ananna, lead writer of the paper and a postdoctoral analysis affiliate at Dartmouth. “Over time, we’ve made many assumptions about the physics of these objects. Now we know that the properties of obscured black holes are significantly different from the properties of AGNs that are not as heavily hidden.”
Tonima Tasnim Ananna, postdoctoral analysis affiliate at Dartmouth College. Credit: Robert Gill/Dartmouth College
Supermassive black holes are believed to reside on the middle of almost all massive galaxies, together with our personal, the Milky Way. The gravitationally powerful objects devour galactic gas, dust, and stars, and they can become heavier than small galaxies.
For decades, astronomers have been interested in the light signatures of active galactic nuclei, a type of supermassive black hole that is “accreting,” or in a rapid growth stage.
Beginning in the late 1980s, astrophysicists realized that light signatures coming from space ranging from radio wavelengths to X-rays could be attributed to AGNs. It was believed that the objects usually had a doughnut-shaped ring—or “torus”—of gas and dust around them. The different brightness and colors associated with the objects were thought to be the result of the angle from which they were being observed, which would affect how much of the torus was obscuring the view.
From this, the unified theory of AGNs became the prevalent viewpoint. The theory guides that if a black hole is being viewed through its torus, it should appear faint. If it is being viewed from below or above the ring, it should appear bright. According to the current study, however, the past research relied too heavily on data from the less obscured objects and skewed research results.
The new study focuses on how quickly black holes are feeding on space matter, or their accretion rates. The research found that the accretion rate does not depend upon the mass of a black hole, it varies significantly depending on how obscured it is by the gas and dust ring.
Tonima Tasnim Ananna, a postdoctoral research associate at Dartmouth College, and Ryan Hickox, professor of physics and astronomy. Credit: Robert Gill/Dartmouth College
“This provides support for the idea that the torus structures around black holes are not all the same,” said Ryan Hickox, professor of physics and astronomy and a co-author of the study. “There is a relationship between the structure and how it is growing.”
The result shows that the amount of dust and gas surrounding an AGN is directly related to how much it is feeding, confirming that there are differences beyond orientation between different populations of AGNs. When a black hole is accreting at a high rate, the energy blows away dust and gas. As a result, it is more likely to be unobscured and appear brighter. Conversely, a less active AGN is surrounded by a denser torus and appears fainter.
“In the past, it was uncertain how the obscured AGN population varied from their more easily observable, unobscured counterparts,” said Ananna. “This new research definitively shows a fundamental difference between the two populations that goes beyond viewing angle.”
The study stems from a decade-long analysis of nearby AGNs detected by Swift-BAT, a high-energy NASA X-ray telescope. The telescope allows researchers to scan the local universe to detect obscured and unobscured AGNs.
The research is the result of an international scientific collaboration—the BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey (BASS)—that has been working over a decade to collect and analyze optical/infrared spectroscopy for AGN observed by Swift BAT.
“We have never had such a large sample of X-ray detected obscured local AGN before,” said Ananna. “This is a big win for high-energy X-ray telescopes.”
The paper builds on previous research from the research team analyzing AGNs. For the study, Ananna developed a computational technique to assess the effect of obscuring matter on observed properties of black holes, and analyzed data collected by the wider research team using this technique.
According to the paper, by knowing a black hole’s mass and how fast it is feeding, researchers can determine when most supermassive black holes underwent most of their growth, thus providing valuable information about the evolution of black holes and the universe.
“One of the biggest questions in our field is where do supermassive black holes come from,” said Hickox. “This research provides a critical piece that can help us answer that question and I expect it to become a touchstone reference for this research discipline.”
Future research could include focusing on wavelengths that allow the team to search beyond the local universe. In the nearer term, the team would like to understand what triggers AGNs to go into high accretion mode, and how long it takes rapidly accreting AGNs to transition from heavily obscured to unobscured.
Reference: “BASS. XXX. Distribution Functions of DR2 Eddington Ratios, Black Hole Masses, and X-Ray Luminosities” by Tonima Tasnim Ananna, Anna K. Weigel, Benny Trakhtenbrot, Michael J. Koss, C. Megan Urry, Claudio Ricci, Ryan C. Hickox, Ezequiel Treister, Franz E. Bauer, Yoshihiro Ueda, Richard Mushotzky, Federica Ricci, Kyuseok Oh, Julian E. Mejía-Restrepo, Jakob Den Brok, Daniel Stern, Meredith C. Powell, Turgay Caglar, Kohei Ichikawa, O. Ivy Wong, Fiona A. Harrison and Kevin Schawinski, 15 July 2022, The Astrophysical Journal.
DOI: 10.3847/1538-4365/ac5b64
Researchers contributing to the study include Benny Trakhtenbrot, Tel Aviv University; Claudia Megan Urry, Yale University; and Mike Koss of Eureka Scientific.
