arXiv subjects

David Garofalo

Publications and source records attributed to David Garofalo.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A Critical Eddington Ratio for X-Shaped Radio Galaxies

We derive a quantitative condition for the formation of X-shaped radio galaxies by evaluating the competition between black hole spin evolution and the radiative fading of relic plasma within our previously proposed framework. The simultaneous visibility of two jet axes requires that the timescale for spin evolution across zero, t_trans, be shorter than the fading timescale of relic radio emission, t_fade. We estimate the transition timescale as t_trans about 5 million /lambda yr, where lambda is the Eddington ratio, and derive a visibility timescale t_fade about equal to 5-20 Myr based on the evolution of the synchrotron break frequency for typical lobe magnetic fields and redshifts. This leads to a critical Eddington ratio lambda_crit in the range 0.3-1, above which systems can exhibit X-shaped morphologies. We show that this threshold naturally produces an environmental dependence, as radiatively efficient accretion is more readily sustained in low-density environments, while feedback in rich clusters tends to drive systems toward radiatively inefficient states with a larger fraction of systems having lambda much less than lambda_crit, suppressing XRG formation. We further demonstrate that the observed low fraction of X-shaped radio galaxies (about 1-5%) arises from the limited overlap window combined with geometric and detectability effects. These results provide a quantitative and testable extension of our previous model, linking X-shaped morphology to accretion rate and environmental conditions through a simple timescale criterion.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2026

Winds Versus Jets in Active Galactic Nuclei

The well-established anti-correlation between disk winds and relativistic jets in X-ray binaries is often interpreted in a scale-invariant black hole accretion context. If so, active galactic nuclei (AGN) should exhibit a direct mass-scaled analog. We test this prediction across FRII radio quasars, radio-quiet quasars, and jetted and non-jetted Narrow Line Seyfert 1 galaxies (NLS1) in spirals, among others. They exclude simple scale invariance. The highest-velocity winds occur exclusively in radio-quiet quasars, while powerful FRII quasars host systematically weaker winds despite equally large black hole masses. Jetted NLS1s show strong wind suppression consistent with X-ray binary behavior, whereas FRII quasars occupy a distinct regime in which jets and winds coexist. Black hole mass and spin magnitude alone cannot account for this dichotomy. We argue that the angular momentum direction of the disk relative to that of the black hole (aligned versus anti-aligned or co-rotation versus counter-rotation) is the critical parameter: secularly fueled spiral systems and most post-merger systems favor co-rotation, which is associated with compact ISCO radii, high radiative efficiency, strong winds, and jet suppression, while the counter-rotating subset of merger-influenced ellipticals can sustain powerful jets alongside moderate winds. Moreover, while spiral AGN and merger-driven radio-quiet quasars experience similar strong jet/wind anti-correlation, they cannot be treated as strict scaled analogs of X-ray binaries, which undergo rapid state transitions involving magnetic flux redistribution absent in AGN. At least two distinct wind-jet regimes therefore operate across the mass scale. We identify the details of this behavior across AGN subclasses.

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arXiv2026

A GRMHD-Calibrated Semi-Analytical Model for Hot Sub-Keplerian Accretion Flows in Kerr Spacetime

We develop a simple, semi-analytical, kinematic model for hot, thick accretion flows, constructed by interpolating between Keplerian and free-fall geodesic solutions in the Kerr metric. Unlike self-consistent general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD) frameworks, our model contains no explicit magnetic fields or stress terms; instead, it uses a smooth, radially varying transition function T(r) to connect the velocity components from near-Keplerian rotation at large distances to a free-fall state near the event horizon. While the coefficients $\alpha$ and $\beta$ remain constant, the transition function is a true function of radius, allowing the flow properties to vary smoothly with radius. We calibrate and validate this model against time- and azimuthally averaged profiles from long-duration magnetically arrested disk (MAD) simulations spanning a wide range of black hole spins ($a=-0.9$ to $+0.9$). The model successfully captures the properties of accretion flow parameters across both prograde and retrograde configurations. Quantitatively, the predicted radial velocity, angular velocity, and density profiles match the simulation data to within an average factor of approximately 1.8, 1.6, and 1.6, respectively, while the specific angular momentum exhibits the closest agreement, remaining within a factor of approximately 1.2. This fast semi-analytical prescription gives significantly lower errors than previous constant-coefficient models and it is a computationally affordable tool for various applications such as ray tracing, accretion parameter exploration, and spectral modelling.

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arXiv2025

On the origin and nature of double-double radio galaxies

Double-double radio galaxies (DDRGs) display inner and outer jets or lobes thought to result from intermittent accretion. Due to randomly triggered accretion events, the lifetime of the retriggered jet is not expected to have any connection to the time of quiescence between jets, yet we show that a correlation between the two quantities may exist, which we interpret as resulting from continued accretion through the quiescent jet phase. Despite continuous accretion, a jet is absent because its presence depends on a non-zero value of black hole spin, but accretion transitions the system from counter-rotation to corotation, and therefore through zero black hole spin where a jet cannot form. The time of jet quiescence depends on how long it takes to spin the black hole up again in corotation, which is longer for lower accretion rates. Once the black hole spin is large enough for a renewed jet, this inner jet will last longer the lower the accretion rate is. Hence, in a continuous accretion scenario, longer quiescent times tend to associate to longer inner jet times. In addition, DDRG jets are of FRII morphology which we show to result from the absence of a tilt in the accretion disk in the transition through zero black hole spin, ensuring the absence of an FRI jet in a way that connects with our understanding of X-shaped radio galaxies. Both correlated timescales as well as sameness in jet morphology offers evidence in favor of our picture.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2025

How a Klein-Nishina Modified Eddington limited accretion explains rapid black hole growth in the early universe

The discovery of quasars and their supermassive black holes (SMBHs) over $10^{9} M_{\odot}$ merely hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang generates tension with the idea of Eddington-limited accretion and pressures the community into exploring the concept of massive black hole seeds and/or super-Eddington accretion. The observation that many black holes have reached supermassive status while obeying the Eddington limit is puzzling as accretion models are not spherically symmetric. We address this issue by illustrating the physics behind a picture of inner disk accretion involving a geometrically thick, hot quasi-spherical flow and argue that such an inner region provides the radiation that instantiates the Eddington limit. Given the energetics of the inner disk edge, we show how the characteristic electron cross-section drops below its Thomson value, allowing black holes to grow rapidly despite being Eddington-limited. Indeed, after implementing a modified cross-section calculated via the Klein-Nishina Formula, we find that SMBH formation time drops by up to $47\%$. In this context, we show how a $10^{9} M_{\odot}$ black hole can form from a seed $10 M_{\odot}$ black hole within $500$ Myr by way of accretion and mergers. While our picture is over-simplified and contrived in a number of ways that we discuss, we suggest that our scenario is interesting in that it offers a solution to two issues at the intersection of astrophysics and cosmology, namely the reason the Eddington limit is obeyed and how some black holes have grown rapidly despite that limit.

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arXiv2025

Why Jet Power and Star Formation Are Uncorrelated in Active Galaxies

Jet luminosity from active galaxies and the rate of star formation have recently been found to be uncorrelated observationally. We show how to understand this in the context of a model in which powerful AGN jets enhance star formation for up to hundreds of millions of years while jet power decreases in time, followed by a longer phase in which star formation is suppressed but coupled to jet power increasing with time. We also highlight characteristic differences depending on environment richness in a way that is also compatible with the observed SEDs of high redshift radio galaxies. While the absence of a direct correlation between jet power and star formation rate emerges naturally, our framework allows us to also predict the environment richness, range of excitation and redshift values of radio AGN in the jet power-star formation rate plane.

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arXiv2024

Characteristics of Powerful Radio Galaxies

Mature radio galaxies such as M87 belong to a specific subclass of active galaxies (AGN) whose evolution in time endows them with five distinguishing characteristics, including (1) low excitation emission, (2) low star formation rates, (3) high bulge stellar-velocity dispersion, (4) bright stellar nuclei, and (5) weak or nonexistent merger signatures. We show how to understand these seemingly disparate characteristics as originating from the time evolution of powerful radio quasars and describe a new model prediction that tilted accretion disks in AGN are expected to occur in bright quasars but not in other subclasses of AGN. The picture we present should be understood as the most compelling evidence for counter-rotation as a key element in feedback from accreting black holes.

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arXiv2024

The properties of FR0 radio galaxies as intermediate objects in the evolution of radio galaxies

The counter-rotation between black holes and accretion disk configuration was introduced over a decade ago to elucidate the nature of the radio loud/radio-quiet dichotomy and the jet-disk connection, but has since been applied to a plethora of observations across space and time. We briefly review the paradigm in which counter-rotation is key for the triggering of radio galaxies and its observational support, then apply it to a series of observations concerning FR0 radio galaxies. FR0 radio galaxies appear to be radio galaxies in transition, with low-spinning black holes and thus weaker but tilted jets with respect to an earlier radio quasar phase. As a result, FR0 radio galaxies are prescribed to be in an earlier phase of star formation suppression in radio galaxies, compared to a later phase that is unlikely to be less than tens of millions of years in the future if they have enough accretion fuel to evolve into more powerful FRI radio galaxies. FR0 radio galaxies will have a greater or lesser star formation suppression feedback effect depending on how long they live. Tilted jets also enhance stellar velocities in the bulge. Because FR0 jet lengths are of the same order of magnitude as the radius of the stellar bulge, FR0 jets are prescribed to have begun, more or less recently depending on their age, to affect stellar velocity dispersions as well. As a result, they will be associated with dispersion values that tend to be larger than for characteristically non-jetted active galaxies, but smaller than giant radio galaxies such as M87 that have experienced a long-term tilted and more powerful FRI jet. With these ideas it is possible to make a coarse-grained prediction for the slope of the M-σ plane for FR0 radio galaxies with values between 4 and 8.

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arXiv2023

M-$σ$ relations across space and time

Feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN) has long been invoked to explain the correlation between black hole mass and stellar velocity dispersion (M-$σ$) discovered in low redshift galaxies. We describe the time evolution of AGN in the M-$σ$ plane based on our gap model (Garofalo, Evans \& Sambruna 2010) for black hole accretion and jet formation illustrating a fundamental difference between jetted and non-jetted AGN. While the latter tend to evolve diagonally upward with black hole mass increasing along with stellar dispersion, we show that jetted AGN tend on average to move initially more upwards because their effect on velocity dispersion is weaker than for non-jetted AGN. But this initial phase is followed by a shift in the nature of the feedback, from positive to negative, a transition that is more dramatic on average in denser cluster environments. The feedback gets its kick from tilted jets which shut down star formation but increase velocity dispersion values. As this change in the nature of the feedback takes tens of millions to hundreds of millions of years, these cluster, merger-triggered jetted AGN, will evolve more upwards for up to order $10^{8}$ years, followed by an extremely long phase in which low excitation progressively slows black hole growth but dramatically affects stellar dispersion. As a result, powerful jetted AGN evolve for most of their lives almost horizontally on the M-$σ$ plane. The prediction is that strongest AGN feedback on stellar dispersion is a late universe phenomenon with M87 a good example. We show how jetted and non-jetted AGN parallel the Sersic and core-Sersic galaxy paths in the M-$σ$ plane found by Sahu et al (2019) and to a prediction that jetted quasars are not core-Sersic galaxies as found for lower redshift jetted AGN.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2023

The massive black holes, high accretion rates, and non-tilted jet feedback, of jetted AGN triggered by secular processes

That jetted active galactic nuclei (AGN) are also hosted in spiral galaxies is now well established. Our understanding of how such objects might fit in the radio loud AGN subclass has been described by Foschini and others over the past decade in that jets in spirals are weaker than those of radio galaxies and quasars because the black holes in spirals tend to be less massive. Recent data, however, may be pointing to a different picture which we describe. Unlike powerful jetted AGN in ellipticals, we illustrate from model perspectives, features of jets in spirals responsible for limiting both their power as well as their effect on their host galaxies. AGN triggered by secular processes fail to generate jet re-orientation, a key ingredient in the jetted AGN feedback mechanism in merger-triggered ellipticals that leads to the red-and-dead radio galaxies at low redshift such as M87. As a result, jetted AGN in spirals tend to live in a separate part of the parameter space compared to radio galaxies and quasars. Because of the absence of jet reorientation and due to the relatively short-lived jet phases, jetted AGN in spirals are best compared to radio quiet or jetless AGN than any other jetted AGN subclass.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2023

Advanced life peaked billions of years ago according to black holes

The link between black holes and star formation allows us to draw a connection between black holes and the places and times extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs) had a greater chance of emerging. Within the context of the gap paradigm for black holes, we show that denser cluster environments that led to gas rich mergers and copious star formation were places less compatible on average with the emergence of ETIs compared to isolated elliptical galaxies by almost two orders of magnitude. The probability for ETIs peaked in these isolated environments around 6 billion years ago and cosmic downsizing shifted the likelihood of ETIs emerging to galaxies with weak black hole feedback, such as in spiral galaxies, at late times.

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arXiv2023

Counter-rotating black holes from FRII lifetimes

Estimates suggest that while FRII jets appear to have lifetimes constrained to hundreds of millions of years, radio galaxies with FRI jets appear to be longer lived. We illustrate the nature of this time constraint from model perspectives, showing how compatibility between theory and data match in a way suggesting a key difference between active galaxies whose engines are characterized by accretion onto co-rotating versus counter-rotating black holes. We calculate a range of timescales for counter-rotating black holes for a range of accretion rates compatible with theory which we then compare to data. The validity of these timescales constitutes the most powerful recent piece of evidence for considering counter-rotation between black holes and accretion disks in high energy astrophysics.

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arXiv2022

Is jet re-orientation the elusive trigger for star formation suppression in radio galaxies?

Jet re-orientation associated with the time evolution of radio quasars explains the formation of X-shaped radio galaxies and their preference for isolated environments. But since X-shaped radio galaxies are generally not found in dense environments (e.g. groups/clusters), the jet re-orientation phenomenon for radio galaxies in groups and clusters has been ignored. We take a closer look at the re-orientation of FRI jets with respect to FRII jets, and find that it may constitute the as-yet unidentified trigger for star formation suppression in radio galaxies. We show how the recently explored radio "red geyser" galaxies can be interpreted in this context and ultimately reveal a deeper understanding of why FRII radio galaxies are on one side of the star formation enhancement/suppression divide compared to FRI radio galaxies.

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arXiv2022

The unusual active galaxy H1821+643 and the elusive nature of FRI quasars

The moderate spin estimate for the black hole at the center of the cool core cluster H1821+643 motivates the completion of a story about this object's origin and evolution that was in the making since the work by Blundell and Rawlings over two decades ago as the first example of a massive black hole accreting at near Eddington rates with an FRI jet. This elusive combination of properties was explained in our 2010 model where we showed it to be part of a small parameter space that includes X shaped radio galaxies. As an accreting black hole that never experienced a counterrotating phase, H1821+643 is constrained by theory to produce a jet for spin values between 0.1 and about 0.7 and an FRI jet for a slightly smaller range. The feedback from such a black hole is not subject to a tilted jet and is why star formation rates remain high in this cluster environment. The prediction is that H1821+643 is within millions of years of becoming jetless.

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arXiv2022

Peculiar black hole accretion rates in AGN with highest star formation rates in the universe

Pouliasis et al (2022b) explored star formation rates, black hole accretion rates, and stellar mass of active galaxies at redshift above 3.5, uncovering a leveling off of the star formation rate at high stellar mass, which they consider to be evidence of AGN feedback. Their data shows that as AGN approach the flattening of the curve in the star formation rate - stellar mass plane, the accretion rates begin to drop. We describe the nature of the AGN feedback responsible for this in terms of powerful FRII jets enhancing star formation rates but eventually also triggering a shift in accretion from near-Eddington rates to advection dominated. These systems are on the cusp of a dramatic transition where the active galaxy goes from strong enhancement to large suppression of star formation in a way that produces the steeper slope for radio AGN at low redshift compared to radio AGN at higher redshift and to jetless AGN. We argue, therefore, that the data of Pouliasis et al constitute the high redshift objects predicted by Singh et al (2021) that connect to the low redshift behavior of radio AGN shown in Comerford et al (2020).

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arXiv2021

Low Frequency Quasi Periodic Oscillations and Shocks in Accretion onto Black Hole

Low-frequency quasi-periodic oscillations (LFQPOs) have been routinely observed in black hole X-ray binaries (BHXRBs). These LFQPOs can be explained by axisymmetric shock oscillation in accretion flow around a rotating black hole. We address the physical origin of Type-C LFQPOs in BHXRBs observed by the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer satellite considering a minimum number of free parameters, namely, specific energy and specific angular momentum of the infalling matter for a given set of BH mass and spin parameter. We apply the solution for a large number of BH candidates to further strengthen the scenario of an anti-correlation between the QPO frequency and the location of the shock. Our study also confirms that Compton cooling can be sufficient to explain the observed QPOs.

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arXiv2021

The astrophysics of rotational energy extraction from a black hole

Recent work has called into question whether nature can extract the rotational energy of a black hole via electromagnetic fields by appealing to an alleged ability to absorb current. We describe the strategies needed to properly treat the astrophysics in curved spacetime near black holes, showing that while the Blandford-Znajek effect is sound, the deeper nature of the electric nature of black holes remains unresolved.

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arXiv2021

The black hole-star formation connection over cosmic time

Observations at low redshift have begun to tease out the star formation rate in active galaxies (AGN), which marks the beginning of the black hole-star formation connection over cosmic time. Star formation appears to depend on AGN type, cluster richness, and black hole accretion, but in ways that are not direct and have yet to be understood. Much of the confusion is that while some AGN appear to enhance star formation, others seem to suppress it. By implementing simplified, yet informed assumptions about AGN feedback on star formation, we show how AGN with jets might be dominated by two phases in which star formation is first enhanced, then suppressed. With this new element incorporated into our model, we make sense of radio and quasar mode behavior in the star formation rate-stellar mass (SFR-SM) plane for AGN. Due to jet feedback on star formation, jetted AGN tend to move upwards and rightward in the SFR-SM plane and then downward and to the right, past both the star-forming main sequence (SFMS) as well as the radio-quiet AGN. This picture allows us to predict the black hole connection to star formation as a function of the environment over the history of the universe.

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