Improving Black Hole Accretion Treatment in Hydrodynamical Simulations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a more realistic, disc-mediated black hole accretion model in hydrodynamical simulations, improving the understanding of SMBH feeding and feedback effects on galactic gas dynamics.

Contribution

It proposes and tests a sub-resolution thin accretion disc model coupled with SMBH in simulations, capturing more accurate accretion timescales and feedback effects.

Findings

Disc-mediated accretion is smoother and delayed compared to instantaneous feeding.

A central cavity forms only in disc-based simulations, indicating less volatile accretion impacts surrounding gas.

The model enhances realism in SMBH feeding simulations, affecting feedback and gas dynamics.

Abstract

The large galactic scales are connected to the many orders of magnitude smaller supermassive black hole (SMBH) scales by an episodic cycle of feeding and feedback. Active galactic nuclei (AGN) are powered by accretion onto SMBH and the majority of AGN energy, in near-Eddington regime, is produced in thin sub-pc accretion discs. Currently, it is very difficult to model processes that occur on vastly different scales, ranging from the circumnuclear gas reservoirs at tens to hundreds of parsecs, down to the accretion disc scales at <0.01 pc. While sub-grid prescriptions used in large-scale or cosmological simulations are able to reproduce large-scale feedback, we propose using a more realistic model in parsec-scale simulations, where it is important to get accurate timescales to understand how feedback affects gas dynamics and star formation in the vicinity of the AGN. To test our approach we use a sub-resolution thin accretion disc model, coupled to the SMBH, in a set of hydrodynamical simulations of a retrograde collision between a gas ring and a molecular cloud in an environment similar to the Galactic centre using the SPH code Gadget-3. The disc-mediated feeding of the SMBH is relatively smooth and delayed compared to an instantaneous feeding prescription. While the reduction of accretion due to feedback is present in both accretion disc and instantaneous feeding simulations, a clear central cavity appears only in accretion disc runs - hinting that a less volatile accretion phase could have a greater impact on the surrounding gas.