Accretion onto supermassive and intermediate mass black holes in cosmological simulations

Abstract

Accretion is the dominant contribution to the cosmic massive black hole density in the Universe today. Yet, modelling it in cosmological simulations is challenging due to the dynamic range involved, as well as the theoretical uncertainties of the underlying mechanisms driving accretion from galactic to black hole horizon scales. We present a simple, flexible parametrization for gas inflows onto massive black holes in order to manage this uncertainty in large-volume cosmological simulations. This is done as part of the "Learning the Universe'' collaboration, which aims to jointly infer the initial conditions and physical processes governing the evolution of the Universe using a Bayesian forward-modelling approach. To allow such a forward-modelling, we update the prescription for accretion with a two-parameter free-fall based inflow estimate that allows for a radius-dependent inflow rate and add a simple model for unresolved accretion disks. We use uniform resolution cosmological hydrodynamical simulations and the IllustrisTNG framework to study the massive black hole population and its dependence on the introduced model parameters. Once the parameters of the accretion formula are chosen to result in a roughly similar redshift zero black hole mass density, the differences caused by the details in the accretion formula are moderate in the supermassive black hole regime, indicating that it is difficult to distinguish between accretion mechanisms based on luminous active galactic nuclei powered by supermassive black holes. Applying the same models to intermediate mass black holes at high redshift, however, reveals significantly different accretion rates in high redshift, moderate luminosity active galactic nuclei and different frequencies and mass distributions of intermediate mass black hole mergers for the same black hole formation model.