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    Using the Fundamental Plane of black hole activity to distinguish X-ray processes from weakly accreting black holes

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    Access Status
    Open access
    Authors
    Plotkin, Richard
    Markoff, S.
    Kelly, B.
    Körding, E.
    Anderson, S.
    Date
    2012
    Type
    Journal Article
    
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Citation
    Plotkin, R. and Markoff, S. and Kelly, B. and Körding, E. and Anderson, S. 2012. Using the Fundamental Plane of black hole activity to distinguish X-ray processes from weakly accreting black holes. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 419 (1): pp. 267-286.
    Source Title
    Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
    DOI
    10.1111/j.1365-2966.2011.19689.x
    ISSN
    0035-8711
    School
    Department of Physics and Astronomy
    Remarks

    This article has been accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society ©: 2011 The Authors. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.

    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/52262
    Collection
    • Curtin Research Publications
    Abstract

    The Fundamental Plane of black hole activity is a relation between X-ray luminosity, radio luminosity and black hole mass for hard-state Galactic black holes and their supermassive analogues. The Fundamental Plane suggests that, at low-accretion rates, the physical processes regulating the conversion of an accretion flow into radiative energy could be universal across the entire black hole mass scale. However, there is still a need to further refine the Fundamental Plane in order to better discern the radiative processes and their geometry very close to the black hole, in particular the source of hard X-rays. Further refinement is necessary because error bars on the best-fitting slopes of the Fundamental Plane are generally large, and also the inferred coefficients can be sensitive to the adopted sample of black holes. In this work, we regress the Fundamental Plane with a Bayesian technique. Our approach shows that sub-Eddington black holes emit X-ray emission that is predominantly optically thin synchrotron radiation from the jet, provided that their radio spectra are flat or inverted. X-ray emission dominated by very radiatively inefficient accretion flows is excluded at the >3s level. We also show that it is difficult to place Fanaroff-Riley type I (FR I) galaxies on to the Fundamental Plane because their X-ray jet emission is highly affected by synchrotron cooling. On the other hand, BL Lac objects (i.e. relativistically beamed sub-Eddington AGN) fit on to the Fundamental Plane. Including a uniform subset ofhigh-energy peakedBL Lac objects from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, we find sub-Eddington black holes with flat/inverted radio spectra follow logLX= (1.45 ± 0.04)logLR- (0.88 ± 0.06)logMBH- 6.07 ± 1.10, with sint= 0.07 ± 0.05 dex. Finally, we discuss how the effects of synchrotron cooling of jet emission from the highest black hole masses can bias Fundamental Plane regressions, perhaps leading to incorrect inferences on X-ray radiation mechanisms. © 2011 The Authors Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society © 2011 RAS.

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