Sgr A*: a window into low-luminosity AGNs

Roman ShcherbakovPhD colloquium

27 Apr 2011

Credit: NASA/Dana Berry

conduction

BH shadow

Typical AGN is not active

Lbol – total luminosity

LEdd – Eddington luminosity (theoretical maximum AGN luminosity)

Ho 2008, review

Sample of nearby galactic nuclei

Hopkins 2008, thesis

Luminosity of a major galaxy merger

An AGN shines at Eddington luminosityfor only a short time

(mergers don’t happen all the time)

Typical AGN hasLbol/Ledd~10-5

lower Lbol objects may still be missed Sgr A* has Lbol/Ledd~10-8

Galactic Center Black Hole Sgr A*

Closest to us – easier to study? Not really

Balick & Brown 1974

Discovered as a radio source

Monitoring of stellar orbits => black hole inside

Ghez et al. 2008; Gillessen et al. 2009

sunMM 6103.4 kpcd 3.8

Narayan et al. 1998

Dramatically underluminous

EddLL 810

vs

Keck-UCLAGC group

Physics vs accretion rate

Real galactic nuclei have Lbol/Ledd~10-5 => low

Sgr A* has Lbol/Ledd~10-8

Esin

, McC

linto

ck, N

aray

an 1

998 Thin disk

Shakura & Sunyaev 1973

ADAFAdvection-dominated

accretion flow

Narayan, Yi 1994+

Low density, high T plasma

Large mean free path

Conduction

Oth

er e

ffect

s/flo

w ty

pes

Johnson, Quataert 2007

Eddmm /

Eddmm /

Narayan & Medvedev 2001Theory

Ruszkowski & Oh 2010Simulations

In magnetized flow: conduction is damped 3-5 times

Unbindsthe outer flow

Conductive heat flux

The binding energy of a gram of gas at a few rg drives off 100 kg of gas from 105 rg

Blandford & Begelman 1999

Now we know how!

How does conduction work?Equilibrates Te

Electrons can jump from one field line to another

Original: NASA/Dana Berry

rg=G M/c2 – characteristic BH size

Feeding by stellar windsCuadra et al 2005+

Stars emit wind at 300 – 1200km/s ejection rate yearM Sun /10~ 3

Winds collide, heat the gas, provide seed magnetic field

Most of gas flows out, some accretes

Typical for local AGNs: Kauffman, Heckman, 2009

Sgr A*

~10’’=0.4pc

Gas is there. Does it accrete?

Model w/ conduction & stellar winds (1D)Solve 1D conservation equations modified by conduction w/ heat flux matter/energy input from stellar winds

eTQ ~

9.0 rne OutflowInflow

Heat flux Q

ADAF

Shcherbakov & Baganoff 2010rg=G M/c2 – characteristic BH size

r/rg, distance from center

blue – quiescent observations

Fitting X-raysMuno et al. 2008

Shcherbakov & Baganoff 2010

Reproduce surface brightness profile

X-rays from hot gas/no point sources

Chandra view of Sgr A*

45.1/2 dof

red – model convolved w/ PSF

Conclusions of Part 1 Most AGNs are in extremely underluminous state

New models/effects are needed to explain them

Conduction is a promising candidate – works for Sgr A*

“More self-consistent” models – future work

Application to other low-luminosity AGNs (~20)

Future work

Part 2. Modeling LLAGN inner flow –

BH spin

Techniques to Find BH spinBlack hole accretion

Radiatively efficient (thin disk) Radiatively inefficient (RIAF)

X-ray continuum

Iron line

Polarization of X-ray continuum

Inference from jet powerDaly 2008+McClintock, Narayan,

Steiner, Gou etc.

Fabian, Reynolds etc.

Li, Schnittman, Krolik etc.

most AGNs

Sub-mm polarized continuum

I. Hot rarefied plasma Te ~1010-11K (relativistic)II. Emits radio/sub-mm near (?) the event horizonIII. Radiation is polarized + inverse Compton upscatteredIV. Emission/transfer modulated by GR effectsV. Spectral fitting gives inclination θ, spin a*

controversial

future

Fabbiano et al. 2003

Radiation from inefficient BH accretion

ComptonizedIR, X-Rays

Sub-mm

credit: NASA

Jet emission

Sgr A* extended emission+ Compton-scattered (SSC)

cyclo-synchrotronnear event horizon

jet/non-thermal

cyclo-synchrotronnear event horizon jet

IC 1459

Yuan et al. 2004polarized (sub-)mm is coming from near the horizon

X-rays

Yuan et al. 2003

How to extract a* (spin value)

ObservationsDynamical model of

the flow

GR polarizedradiative transfer

Statistical analysis

Spin a*, inclination θ,electron temperature Te,

accretion rate MdotFor the particular dynamical model

Mean radio/sub-mm spectrum (Sgr A*)

We fit: F(87-857GHz) – 7 points; LP(87,230,349GHz); CP (230,349GHz) All consistent with Gaussian distributions (K-S test) => χ2 analysis justified

Means and standard errors in sub-mm (all observations)

Keck-UCLAGC group

(animation)

Dynamical model

Simulations => decrease N of free parameters

+ eliminate assumptions

Ideal model: no free parameters, correct GR with spin a*treats distribution of electrons

Analytic models

Models based on simulations

Yuan, Quataert, Narayan 2003

Huang, Takahashi, Shen 2009

Moscibrodzka, et al. 2009

*,,, aTM e

2 flow parameters + 2 for BH

Dexter, Agol, Fragile 2009

Shcherbakov, Penna, McKinney, 2010, subm

Assumed magnetic field structure and strength Approximations in flow structure

Reliable flow/magnetic field structure Need to converge Still long way to go to incorporate all effects

© digitalblasphemy.com

Broderick et al. 2009+

3D GRMHD simulationsSimilar setups besides changing spin a*

Simulate a set of spins a*=0; 0.5; 0.7; 0.9; 0.98

Evolve for ~40 orbital periods at 25rg radius (flow settles)

Use averaged profile at late simulation times for radiative transfer

Magnetic field settles by into helix (split monopole in projection)

velocity + density

r/rg

r/rg

magnetic field + its energy densityz/

r gz/

r g

GR polarized radiative transfer

Shcherbakov, Huang 2010

Procedure is outlined in

Shcherbakov 2008

Propagation effects of polarized radiation

Implemented (by me) in C++, run on a supercomputer

Shcherbakov, Penna, McKinney 2010, ApJ, subm, arXiv:1007.4832

Application to Sgr A* in

Ray tracing

Polarization => 4x information

I – total intensity

No polarization info Full polarization info

+ linear polarization (LP)+ circular polarization (CP)+ electric vector position angle (EVPA)

CP

LPI

Which spin is better?

Best spin is a*=0.9

Most probable model: χ2/dof=4,spin a*=0.9,

inclination =52, Te~5·1010Kaccretion rate Mdot=1 10∙ -8Msun/year

Lowest χ2/dof as a function of spin a*

χ2 (a=0) too high => excluded More work needed to reliably find spin

Must use polarization to find spin

Weak constraints from flux fitting

χ2 for flux spectrum

χ 2 for full polariz. info

spin a*

Min

re

duce

d χ2 /

dof

Best fits to observations

Best model has spin a*=0.9 (χ2/dof=4) – red solid curve

Best models for spins 0, 0.5, 0.7, 0.9, 0.98 are shown

Imaging BH horizonVery Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI)

Possible to resolve horizon-scale structure

37μas at 230GHz on Hawaii-Arizona baseline Doeleman et al. 2008

Visibility (size) for the best a*=0.9 model is consistent with VLBI observations

37μas

More stations and baselines in next ~5 years

Map & reconstruct the entire image!

Directly observe BH shadowNew data: Fish et al. 2011 + new observations are being reduced

Flow is inconsistent w/ spherical accretion

Comparison with previous estimates

Paper modelType

N of frequencies

Polar.data

Size X-rays Best spin

Inclination

Broderick et al.2009+

analytic 10 no Yes No 0 48-73

Huang et al. 2009+

analytic 4 Yes, LP No No <0.9 40, 45

Moscibrodzka et al. 2009

2D GRMHD

3(1 in X-rays)

no Yes Yes 0.9 45

Dexter et al. 2009+

3D GRMHD

1 no Yes No 0.9 35-85

Shcherbakov et al. 2010

3D GRMHD

7 Yes, CP+LP

No, found consistent

No 0.9 50-59

Accretion rate ~1 10∙ -8Msun/yragrees with

Mdot ~ 6 10∙ -8Msun/yr from model of outer flow

w/ conduction

Models with more physics, which fit all types of observations

LLAGNs: other objects/new techniques

M31* Analysis of variability

Sgr A*

Fitting X-ray inverse Compton (IC) flux

LX, IC≈4·1032erg/s Shcherbakov, Baganoff, 2010

polarimetric imaging with VLBI

Doeleman et al. 2008, Nature

Li, Garcia 2005+

Jets: other objects/new techniques

M87+ polarimetric imaging with VLBI

Walker et al. 20083C279Full polarization spectrum available

Radiation may come from 10M (Blandford)Homan et al. 2009; Abdo et al. 2010, Nature

Total intensity Circular polarized intensity

Distances in units of rg

Movies

Conclusions Developed & implemented original model of accretion w/ conduction Developed & implemented simulation-based model in Kerr metric Formulated & implemented GR polarized radiative transfer Compiled observed spectrum of Sgr A* & applied rigorous statistics

Reconciled matter supply & demand for Sgr A* Found n~r-0.9 profile between inner and outer Sgr A* flow Achieved fit to sub-mm spectrum, LP & CP fractions, size Constrained Sgr A* spin value & accretion flow properties

Refine model with conduction & simulation-based model for inner flow Improve radiative transfer (add Comptonization) Apply to other LLAGNs & jets (M87, M31, M81, 3C 279, IC 1459, Fornax A)

Future work

2 papers/day on astro-ph