Jet enhanced accretion growth of supermassive black holes

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that jet-enhanced accretion significantly accelerates supermassive black hole growth, making it easier to reach observed masses by high redshift and explaining the black hole mass-radio loudness correlation.

Contribution

It introduces a model where jets boost accretion efficiency, reducing the need for super-Eddington rates in early SMBH growth.

Findings

Jet-enhanced accretion allows SMBHs to reach ~10^9 solar masses by z~6.

The model reduces the need for implausibly high accretion rates.

It explains the correlation between black hole mass and radio loudness.

Abstract

We investigate the effect of a disc-driven jet on the accretion growth of cosmological supermassive black holes (SMBHs). The presence of a jet enhances the mass growth rate because for a given luminosity, the mass accretion rate, is higher (or equivalently, the radiative efficiency e_r is lower for a fixed mass accretion rate) than that predicted by standard accretion disc theory. As jets carry away very little of the accreting matter, a larger proportion of the rest mass can reach the black hole during episodes of jet activity. We show quantitatively that the conditions required to grow a rapidly spinning black hole to a mass ~ 10^9 solar masses by redshift z ~ 6, whilst satisfying the observational constraint e_r > 0.1, are considerably less restrictive for jet-enhanced disc accretion than for standard disc accretion, which requires implausibly high super-Eddington accretion rates. Furthermore, jet-enhanced accretion growth offers a viable explanation for the observed correlation between black hole mass and radio-loudness of quasars.