2018_EJRNL_PP_IGNACIO_MARTIN_NAVARRO_1.pdf
Terbatas pustaka bosscha
» ITB
Terbatas pustaka bosscha
» ITB
Supermassive black holes, with masses more than a million times that of the Sun, seem to inhabit the centres of all massive galaxies1,2. Cosmologically motivated theories of galaxy formation
require feedback from these supermassive black holes to regulate star formation3. In the absence of such feedback, state-of-the-art numerical simulations fail to reproduce the number density and
properties of massive galaxies in the local Universe4–6. There is, however, no observational evidence of this strongly coupled coevolution between supermassive black holes and star formation, impeding our understanding of baryonic processes within galaxies. Here we report that the star formation histories of nearby massive galaxies, as measured from their integrated optical spectra, depend on the mass of the central supermassive black hole. Our results indicate that the black-hole mass scales with the gas cooling rate
in the early Universe. The subsequent quenching of star formation
takes place earlier and more efficiently in galaxies that host highermass central black holes. The observed relation between black-hole
mass and star formation efficiency applies to all generations of
stars formed throughout the life of a galaxy, revealing a continuous
interplay between black-hole activity and baryon cooling