Low-level supermassive black hole activity and star formation in isolated ellipticals
Abstract
We present and discuss Chandra ACIS-S X-ray observations of six early-type galaxies located within cosmic voids. The targeted galaxies have comparable stellar masses of 6-9e10 solar but span a wide range of star formation rates, from 0.03 to 6.5 solar masses per year. These data permit clean investigation of the link, if any, between star formation and low-level supermassive black hole activity. We isolate the nuclear X-ray emission associated with SMBH activity through analyzing the X-ray surface brightness profiles and calculating the predicted X-ray binary contamination within the extraction aperture. The galaxies with higher star formation rates also tend to have greater SMBH-associated X-ray luminosities, perhaps suggestive of a mutual dependence on cold gas. We also compare our void galaxies to cluster early-type galaxies of similar stellar mass, finding that the void galaxies have, on average, more compact optical surface brightness profiles along with greater X-ray luminosities.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #227
- Pub Date:
- January 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AAS...22734227M