@article{96247d9ae8af48b3b9e303fcd6c9fcd5,
title = "The origins of off-centre massive black holes in dwarf galaxies",
abstract = "Massive black holes often exist within dwarf galaxies, and both simulations and observations have shown that a substantial fraction of these may be off-centre with respect to their hosts. We trace the evolution of off-centre massive black holes (MBHs) in dwarf galaxies using cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, and show that the reason for off-centre locations is mainly due to galaxy–galaxy mergers. We calculate dynamical time-scales and show that off-centre MBHs are unlikely to sink to their galaxys{\textquoteright} centres within a Hubble time, due to the shape of the hosts{\textquoteright} potential wells and low stellar densities. These wandering MBHs are unlikely to be detected electromagnetically, nor is there a measurable dynamical effect on the galaxy{\textquoteright}s stellar population. We conclude that off-centre MBHs may be common in dwarfs, especially if the mass of the MBH is small or the stellar mass of the host galaxy is large. However, detecting them is extremely challenging, because their accretion luminosities are very low and they do not measurably alter the dynamics of their host galaxies.",
keywords = "Black hole physics, Galaxies: dwarf, Software: simulations",
author = "Bellovary, {Jillian M.} and Sarra Hayoune and Katheryn Chafla and Donovan Vincent and Alyson Brooks and Christensen, {Charlotte R.} and Munshi, {Ferah D.} and Michael Tremmel and Quinn, {Thomas R.} and {van Nest}, Jordan and Sligh, {Serena K.} and Michelle Luzuriaga",
note = "Funding Information: The authors thank the anonymous referee, who asked helpful and interesting questions. JMB is grateful for the support of the AstroCom NYC project (National Science Foundation (NSF) AST-1153335). JMB and SH acknowledge support from NSF AST-1812642. SH is grateful for support from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. SH, KC, and DR are grateful to NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) grant 1359310 and the Queensborough Community College physics department. JMB and ML acknowledge support from the City University of New York (CUNY) Community College Research Grant. AB acknowledges support from NSF AST-1813871. CRC acknowledges support from NSF CAREER grant AST-1848107. FDM and JPS acknowledge support from NSF grant PHY-2013909. FDM, JPS, and JVN acknowledge support from the University of Oklahoma. MT was supported by an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship under award AST-2001810. JMB thanks Ray Sharma, Nathan Leigh, Amy Reines, Vivienne Baldassare, Jenny Greene, and Mar Mezcua for helpful comments, and Avi Loeb for suggesting the dynamical study described in Section 5.2. Much of our data analysis was done using the PYNBODY software suite (Pontzen et al. 2013). Resources supporting this work were provided by the NASA High-End Computing (HEC) Program through the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Centre. This research was conducted on Munsee Lenape land. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021 The Author(s) Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society",
year = "2021",
month = aug,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1093/mnras/stab1665",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "505",
pages = "5129--5141",
journal = "Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society",
issn = "0035-8711",
publisher = "Oxford University Press",
number = "4",
}