QUIESCENCE CORRELATES STRONGLY WITH DIRECTLY MEASURED BLACK HOLE MASS IN CENTRAL GALAXIES
- Department of Astronomy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 (United States)
- Department of Physics, Institute for Astronomy, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich (Switzerland)
- Max-Planck-Institut für Astrophysik, D-85741 Garching (Germany)
- GEPI, Observatoire de Paris, CNRS, F-75014 Paris (France)
Roughly half of all stars reside in galaxies without significant ongoing star formation. However, galaxy formation models indicate that it is energetically challenging to suppress the cooling of gas and the formation of stars in galaxies that lie at the centers of their dark matter halos. In this Letter, we show that the dependence of quiescence on black hole and stellar mass is a powerful discriminant between differing models for the mechanisms that suppress star formation. Using observations of 91 star-forming and quiescent central galaxies with directly measured black hole masses, we find that quiescent galaxies host more massive black holes than star-forming galaxies with similar stellar masses. This observational result is in qualitative agreement with models that assume that effective, more-or-less continuous active galactic nucleus feedback suppresses star formation, strongly suggesting the importance of the black hole in producing quiescence in central galaxies.
- OSTI ID:
- 22654188
- Journal Information:
- Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 830, Issue 1; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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