Open AccessA Fundamental Plane of black hole activity
Author(s) -
Merloni Andrea,
Heinz Sebastian,
Matteo Tiziana Di
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
monthly notices of the royal astronomical society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.058
H-Index - 383
eISSN - 1365-2966
pISSN - 0035-8711
DOI - 10.1046/j.1365-2966.2003.07017.x
Subject(s) - physics , astrophysics , supermassive black hole , active galactic nucleus , accretion (finance) , fundamental plane (elliptical galaxies) , black hole (networking) , luminosity , spectral index , stellar mass , astronomy , radio galaxy , galaxy , star formation , spectral line , computer network , lenticular galaxy , routing protocol , routing (electronic design automation) , computer science , link state routing protocol
We examine the disc–jet connection in stellar mass and supermassive black holes by investigating the properties of their compact emission in the X‐ray and radio bands. We compile a sample of ∼100 active galactic nuclei with measured masses, 5‐GHz core emission, and 2–10 keV luminosities, together with eight galactic black holes with a total of ∼50 simultaneous observations in the radio and X‐ray bands. Using this sample, we study the correlations between the radio ( L R ) and the X‐ray ( L X ) luminosity and the black hole mass ( M ). We find that the radio luminosity is correlated with both M and L X , at a highly significant level. In particular, we show that the sources define a ‘Fundamental Plane’ in the three‐dimensional (log L R , log L X , log M ) space, given by log L R = (0.60 +0.11 −0.11 ) log L X + (0.78 +0.11 −0.09 ) log M + 7.33 +4.05 −4.07 , with a substantial scatter of σ R = 0.88 . We compare our results to the theoretical relations between radio flux, black hole mass, and accretion rate derived by Heinz & Sunyaev. Such relations depend only on the assumed accretion model and on the observed radio spectral index. Therefore, we are able to show that the X‐ray emission from black holes accreting at less than a few per cent of the Eddington rate is unlikely to be produced by radiatively efficient accretion, and is marginally consistent with optically thin synchrotron emission from the jet. On the other hand, models for radiatively inefficient accretion flows seem to agree well with the data.