The Accretion Disc Particle Method for Simulations of Black Hole Feeding and Feedback

Understand

Black holes grow by accreting matter from their surroundings.

• However, angular momentum provides an efficient natural barrier to accretion and so only the lowest angular momentum material will be available to feed the black holes.
• The standard sub-grid model for black hole accretion in galaxy formation simulations - based on the Bondi-Hoyle method - does not account for the angular momentum of accreting material, and so it is unclear how representative the black hole accretion rate estimated in this way is likely to be.
• In this paper we introduce a new sub-grid model for black hole accretion that naturally accounts for the angular momentum of accreting material.