Novel Way Allows Astronomers To Study Life Cycle Of Supermassive Black Holes

Researchers from Dartmouth College have developed a new technique to study black holes by analysing the lights coming from them, which could allow scientists to better understand their life cycle.

NASA

Lights coming from supermassive black holes can differ in terms of colours, spectral signature and brightness.

Earlier theories suggested that this difference was due to the different viewing angles and how much the black hole was masked by its doughnut-shaped ring of gas, also referred to as ¡®torus¡¯ as well as the dust that surrounded active galactic nuclei.

The novel study builds on previous research from the research team that analysed AGNs. Researchers developed a computational technique to assess the effect of obscuring matter on observed properties of black holes and analysed data collected by the wider research team using this technique.

The study showed that the amount of dust and gas around the supermassive black holes actually depends on their pace of growth. The black holes, when they consume at a high rate, shed out dust and gas that makes them appear brighter.

Researchers also showed basic differences between supermassive black holes with different light signatures. They highlighted that the differences could not be explained only by whether the observation originated either through or around an AGN.

NASA

Ryan Hickox, professor of physics and astronomy and a co-author of the study explains, "This provides support for the idea that the torus structures around black holes are not all the same. There is a relationship between the structure and how it is growing."

He added, "One of the biggest questions in our field is where do supermassive black holes come from. This research provides a critical piece that can help us answer that question and I expect it to become a touchstone reference for this research discipline."

Future research could focus on wavelengths that could let the team search beyond the local universe. The team, in the short term, wishes to understand what triggers AGNs to go into high accretion mode and how long it takes rapidly accreting AGNs to switch from heavily obscured to unobscured.

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