Intermediate-mass black holes and the fundamental plane of black hole accretion

TL;DR

This study investigates intermediate-mass black holes using radio and X-ray data to examine their placement on the fundamental plane of black hole accretion, revealing classification-dependent deviations.

Contribution

It provides new radio observations of intermediate-mass black holes and analyzes their relation to the fundamental plane, highlighting the impact of optical classification on this relation.

Findings

Most sources detected at 5 GHz with some showing jet morphology.

The fundamental plane agreement varies with optical classification.

Star-forming sources do not follow the fundamental plane.

Abstract

We present new 5 GHz VLA observations of a sample of 8 active intermediate-mass black holes with masses $10^{4.9} < M < 10^{6.1}\ M_{\odot}$ found in galaxies with stellar masses $M_{*} < 3 \times 10^{9}\ M_{\odot}$. We detected 5 of the 8 sources at high significance. Of the detections, 4 were consistent with a point source, and one (SDSS J095418.15+471725.1, with black hole mass $M < 10^{5}\ M_{\odot}$) clearly shows extended emission that has a jet morphology. Combining our new radio data with the black hole masses and literature X-ray measurements, we put the sources on the fundamental plane of black hole accretion. We find that the extent to which the sources agree with the fundamental plane depends on their star-forming/composite/AGN classification based on optical narrow emission line ratios. he single star-forming source is inconsistent with the fundamental plane. The three composite sources are consistent, and three of the four AGN sources are inconsistent with the fundamental plane. We argue that this inconsistency is genuine and not a result of misattributing star-formation to black hole activity. Instead, we identify the sources in our sample that have AGN-like optical emission line ratios as not following the fundamental plane and thus caution the use of the fundamental plane to estimate masses without additional constraints, such as radio spectral index, radiative efficiency, or the Eddington fraction.