Force-feeding Black Holes

Abstract

We propose that the growth of supermassive black holes is associated mainly with brief episodes of highly super-Eddington infall of gas ("hyperaccretion"). This gas is not swallowed in real time, but forms an envelope of matter around the black hole that can be swallowed gradually, over a much longer timescale. However, only a small fraction of the black hole mass can be stored in the envelope at any one time. We argue that any infalling matter above a few per cent of the hole's mass is ejected as a result of the plunge in opacity at temperatures below a few thousand degrees K, corresponding to the Hayashi track. The speed of ejection of this matter, compared to the velocity dispersion (sigma) of the host galaxy's core, determines whether the ejected matter is lost forever or returns eventually to rejoin the envelope, from which it can be ultimately accreted. The threshold between matter recycling and permanent loss defines a relationship between the maximum black hole mass and sigma that resembles the empirical M_BH-sigma relation.Comment: 5 pages, no figures, accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letter