Bridging scales: Modeling suppressed Bondi accretion on black holes and its impact on galaxy growth

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Main Authors: Porras-Valverde, Antonio J., Natarajan, Priyamvada, Ricarte, Angelo, Su, Kung-Yi, Cho, Hyerin, Narayan, Ramesh, Prather, Ben S.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Porras-Valverde, Antonio J.
Natarajan, Priyamvada
Ricarte, Angelo
Su, Kung-Yi
Cho, Hyerin
Narayan, Ramesh
Prather, Ben S.
author_facet Porras-Valverde, Antonio J.
Natarajan, Priyamvada
Ricarte, Angelo
Su, Kung-Yi
Cho, Hyerin
Narayan, Ramesh
Prather, Ben S.
contents The accretion and feedback processes governing supermassive black hole (SMBH) growth span an enormous range of spatial scales, from the Event Horizon to the circumgalactic medium. Recent general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations demonstrate that strong magnetic fields can substantially suppress Bondi accretion by creating magnetically arrested disk (MAD) states, reducing inflow rates by up to two orders of magnitude relative to classical Bondi predictions. We incorporate this magnetic suppression prescription from Cho et al. (2023, 2024) into the Dark Sage semi-analytic model (SAM), which tracks SMBH and galaxy co-evolution within hierarchical merger trees derived from the IllustrisTNG cosmological simulation. Implementing the suppression across different Eddington-ratio regimes, we explore its impact on black hole mass functions (BHMFs), stellar mass functions (SMFs), and AGN luminosity functions. Restricting suppression to sub-Eddington accretors ($f_{\rm Edd} < 3 \times 10^{-3}$) and rescaling AGN feedback efficiencies gives simultaneous agreement with observed $z = 0$ SMFs and BHMFs, as illustrated by Case D in this work. At $z > 6$, super-Eddington growth episodes dominate in the SAM, reproducing JWST-inferred luminous AGN number densities. Our results highlight the critical sensitivity of galaxy assembly to the coupling between small-scale accretion physics and large-scale feedback regulation. Magnetic suppression of hot gas accretion can reconcile low-redshift constraints while preserving the rapid black hole growth required at early cosmic epochs, thereby providing a physically motivated bridge between horizon-scale GRMHD simulations and cosmological galaxy-formation models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_08683
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bridging scales: Modeling suppressed Bondi accretion on black holes and its impact on galaxy growth
Porras-Valverde, Antonio J.
Natarajan, Priyamvada
Ricarte, Angelo
Su, Kung-Yi
Cho, Hyerin
Narayan, Ramesh
Prather, Ben S.
Astrophysics of Galaxies
The accretion and feedback processes governing supermassive black hole (SMBH) growth span an enormous range of spatial scales, from the Event Horizon to the circumgalactic medium. Recent general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic (GRMHD) simulations demonstrate that strong magnetic fields can substantially suppress Bondi accretion by creating magnetically arrested disk (MAD) states, reducing inflow rates by up to two orders of magnitude relative to classical Bondi predictions. We incorporate this magnetic suppression prescription from Cho et al. (2023, 2024) into the Dark Sage semi-analytic model (SAM), which tracks SMBH and galaxy co-evolution within hierarchical merger trees derived from the IllustrisTNG cosmological simulation. Implementing the suppression across different Eddington-ratio regimes, we explore its impact on black hole mass functions (BHMFs), stellar mass functions (SMFs), and AGN luminosity functions. Restricting suppression to sub-Eddington accretors ($f_{\rm Edd} < 3 \times 10^{-3}$) and rescaling AGN feedback efficiencies gives simultaneous agreement with observed $z = 0$ SMFs and BHMFs, as illustrated by Case D in this work. At $z > 6$, super-Eddington growth episodes dominate in the SAM, reproducing JWST-inferred luminous AGN number densities. Our results highlight the critical sensitivity of galaxy assembly to the coupling between small-scale accretion physics and large-scale feedback regulation. Magnetic suppression of hot gas accretion can reconcile low-redshift constraints while preserving the rapid black hole growth required at early cosmic epochs, thereby providing a physically motivated bridge between horizon-scale GRMHD simulations and cosmological galaxy-formation models.
title Bridging scales: Modeling suppressed Bondi accretion on black holes and its impact on galaxy growth
topic Astrophysics of Galaxies
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.08683