The DOI matches its Crossref record; 70 of the 70 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The close environments of accreting massive black holes are shaped by radiative feedback
Open accessAbstract
The majority of the accreting supermassive black holes in the Universe are obscured by large columns of gas and dust. The location and evolution of this obscuring material have been the subject of intense research in the past decades, and are still debated. A decrease in the covering factor of the circumnuclear material with increasing accretion rates has been found by studies across the electromagnetic spectrum. The origin of this trend may be driven by the increase in the inner radius of the obscuring material with incident luminosity, which arises from the sublimation of dust; by the gravitational potential of the black hole; by radiative feedback; or by the interplay between outflows and inflows. However, the lack of a large, unbiased and complete sample of accreting black holes, with reliable information on gas column density, luminosity and mass, has left the main physical mechanism that regulates obscuration unclear. Here we report a systematic multi-wavelength survey of hard-X-ray-selected black holes that reveals that radiative feedback on dusty gas is the main physical mechanism that regulates the distribution of the circumnuclear material. Our results imply that the bulk of the obscuring dust and gas is located within a few to tens of parsecs of the accreting supermassive black hole (within the sphere of influence of the black hole), and that it can be swept away even at low radiative output rates. The main physical driver of the differences between obscured and unobscured accreting black holes is therefore their mass-normalized accretion rate.
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Cites
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Cited by
The 105-Month Swift-BAT All-sky Hard X-Ray Survey
Oh, K., Koss, M., Markwardt, C. B., Schawinski, K., Baumgartner, W. H., Barthelmy, S. D., Cenko, S. B., Gehrels, N., Mushotzky, R., Petulante, A., et al. (2018) · The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series · doi:10.3847/1538-4365/aaa7fd · Cited by 411
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“Radiation pressure on dust grains can launch winds on radial scales larger than the dust sublimation radius (Fabian et al. 2006, 2008), and shape the environment of AGN by determining their obscuration at such scales (Ricci et al. 2017).”
BackgroundWhat drives the growth of black holes: A decade of progress
Alexander, D. M., Hickox, R. C., Aird, J., Combes, F., Costa, T., Habouzit, M., Harrison, C. M., Leng, R. I., Morabito, L. K., Uckelman, S. L., et al. (2025) · New Astronomy Reviews · doi:10.1016/j.newar.2025.101733 · Cited by 18
Metadata
- Authors
- Ricci, C., Trakhtenbrot, B., Koss, M. J., Ueda, Y., Schawinski, K., Oh, K., Lamperti, I., Mushotzky, R., Treister, E., Ho, L. C., Weigel, A., Bauer, F. E., Paltani, S., Fabian, A. C., Xie, Y., & Gehrels, N.
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2017-09
- Volume
- 549
- Issue
- 7673
- Pages
- 488-491
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W2758268742
- Cited by
- 326
- References
- 70
- FWCI
- 20.90
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
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- Ricci, C., Trakhtenbrot, B., Koss, M. J., Ueda, Y., Schawinski, K., Oh, K., Lamperti, I., Mushotzky, R., Treister, E., Ho, L. C., Weigel, A., Bauer, F. E., Paltani, S., Fabian, A. C., Xie, Y., & Gehrels, N. (2017). The close environments of accreting massive black holes are shaped by radiative feedback. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature23906
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