{
  "id": "2008.12303",
  "version": "v1",
  "published": "2020-08-27T18:00:00.000Z",
  "updated": "2020-08-27T18:00:00.000Z",
  "title": "Cosmological simulations of quasar fueling to sub-parsec scales using Lagrangian hyper-refinement",
  "authors": [
    "Daniel Angles-Alcazar",
    "Eliot Quataert",
    "Philip Hopkins",
    "Rachel Somerville",
    "Christopher Hayward",
    "Claude-Andre Faucher-Giguere",
    "Greg Bryan",
    "Dusan Keres",
    "Lars Hernquist",
    "James Stone"
  ],
  "comment": "31 pages, 21 figures, submitted to ApJ",
  "categories": [
    "astro-ph.GA",
    "astro-ph.CO",
    "astro-ph.HE"
  ],
  "abstract": "We present cosmological hydrodynamic simulations of a quasar-mass halo ($M_{\\rm halo} \\approx 10^{12.5}\\,{\\rm M}_{\\odot}$ at z=2) that for the first time resolve gas transport down to the inner 0.1 pc surrounding the central massive black hole. We model a multi-phase interstellar medium including stellar feedback by supernovae, stellar winds, and radiation, and a hyper-Lagrangian refinement technique increasing the resolution dynamically approaching the black hole. We do not include black hole feedback. We show that the sub-pc inflow rate (1) can reach ~6 M$_{\\odot}$yr$^{-1}$ roughly in steady state during the epoch of peak nuclear gas density (z~2), sufficient to power a luminous quasar, (2) is highly time variable in the pre-quasar phase, spanning 0.001-10 M$_{\\odot}$yr$^{-1}$ on Myr timescales, and (3) is limited to short (~2 Myr) active phases (0.01-0.1 M$_{\\odot}$yr$^{-1}$) followed by longer periods of inactivity at lower nuclear gas density and late times (z~1), owing to the formation of a hot central cavity. Inflowing gas is primarily cool, rotational support dominates over turbulence and thermal pressure, and star formation can consume as much gas as provided by inflows across 1 pc - 10 kpc. Gravitational torques from multi-scale stellar non-axisymmetries dominate angular momentum transport over gas self-torquing and pressure gradients, with accretion weakly dependent on black hole mass. Sub-pc inflow rates correlate with nuclear (but decouple from global) star formation and can exceed the Eddington rate by x10. The black hole can move ~10 pc from the galaxy center on ~0.1 Myr. Accreting gas forms pc-scale, rotationally supported, obscuring structures often misaligned with the galaxy-scale disk. These simulations open a new avenue to investigate black hole-galaxy co-evolution.",
  "revisions": [
    {
      "version": "v1",
      "updated": "2020-08-27T18:00:00.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "analyses": {
    "keywords": [
      "black hole",
      "dominate angular momentum transport",
      "time resolve gas transport",
      "lagrangian hyper-refinement",
      "sub-parsec scales"
    ],
    "note": {
      "typesetting": "TeX",
      "pages": 31,
      "language": "en",
      "license": "arXiv",
      "status": "editable"
    }
  }
}