|
22 March 2010
|
Jillian Bellovary (U Washington)
'Predicting the Distribution of Massive Black Holes in the Milky Way Halo'
Supermassive black holes (BHs) have a ubiquitous presence at the
centers of massive galaxies, and their growth has been shown to be
inextricably connected to that of their host galaxy. But what happens
to a BH that forms in a small halo which is then accreted onto a
larger structure? We perform cosmological N-body simulations of a set
of Milky Way-like galaxies to examine the radial and mass
distributions of "wandering" black holes in galaxy halos. Our method
incorporates star formation, supernova feedback, a physically
motivated description of black hole seed creation, growth,and merging.
We find that many of these stripped BHs end up in the outskirts of
galaxy halos, creating a population of wandering BHs that intersect
the disk of large galaxies. These BHs do not grow significantly beyond
their initial seed mass, and may explain some of the off-nuclear
intermediate mass black hole candidates that have been recently
observed.
|
