The Illustris Simulation: Supermassive Black Hole - Galaxy Connection Beyond the Bulge

TL;DR

This study uses the Illustris simulation to analyze spiral galaxy morphology and the supermassive black hole-galaxy connection, revealing tight correlations between black hole mass and large-scale galaxy properties across various galaxy types.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the Illustris simulation accurately reproduces observed relations between black hole mass and galaxy features beyond the bulge, including spiral arm pitch angle and halo properties.

Findings

Good agreement with observational black hole mass-pitch angle relations

Similar scaling relations for barred and non-barred galaxies

Tight correlations between black hole mass and large-scale galaxy properties

Abstract

We study the spiral arm morphology of a sample of the local spiral galaxies in the Illustris simulation and explore the supermassive black hole - galaxy connection beyond the bulge (e.g., spiral arm pitch angle, total stellar mass, dark matter mass, and total halo mass), finding good agreement with other theoretical studies and observational constraints. It is important to study the properties of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies through both observations and simulations and compare their results in order to understand their physics and formative histories.We find that Illustris prediction for supermassive black hole mass relative to pitch angle is in rather good agreement with observations and that barred and non-barred galaxies follow similar scaling relations. Our work shows that Illustris presents very tight correlations between supermassive black hole mass and large-scale properties of the host galaxy, not only for early-type galaxies but also low-mass, blue and star-forming galaxies. These tight relations beyond the bulge suggest that halo properties determine those of a disc galaxy and its supermassive black hole.