Harnessing the full power of the widest Chandra field: average accretion rates of black holes in SDSS galaxies through X-ray stacking
Abstract
Galaxy-scale bars are expected to provide an effective means for driving material towards the central region in spiral galaxies, and possibly feeding supermassive black holes (BHs). I will present our latest results on a statistically-complete study of the effect of bars on average BH accretion. From a well-selected sample of over 50,000 spiral galaxies extracted from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we separate those sources considered to contain galaxy-scale bars from those that do not. Using the first 16 years worth of data taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, we identify X-ray luminous AGN and perform the widest-area X-ray stacking analysis to date on the remaining X-ray undetected sources. Through our X-ray stacking, we derive a time-averaged look at accretion for galaxies at fixed stellar mass and star formation rate, finding that the average nuclear accretion rates of galaxies with bar structures are fully consistent with those lacking bars, and robustly concluding that large-scale bars have little or no effect on the average growth of BHs in nearby (z < 0.15) galaxies over gigayear timescales.
- Publication:
-
AAS/High Energy Astrophysics Division #16
- Pub Date:
- August 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017HEAD...1610633G