University of California Observatories, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA.
Max-Planck Institut für Astronomie, Konigstuhl 17, D-69117 Heidelberg, Germany.
Nature. 2018 Jan 18;553(7688):307-309. doi: 10.1038/nature24999. Epub 2018 Jan 1.
Supermassive black holes, with masses more than a million times that of the Sun, seem to inhabit the centres of all massive galaxies. Cosmologically motivated theories of galaxy formation require feedback from these supermassive black holes to regulate star formation. 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 Universe. 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 higher-mass 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.
超大质量黑洞的质量超过太阳的一百万倍，似乎存在于所有大质量星系的中心。为了解释星系的形成，宇宙学理论需要这些超大质量黑洞的反馈来调节恒星的形成。如果没有这种反馈，最先进的数值模拟就无法重现本地宇宙中大质量星系的密度和性质。然而，并没有观测到这种超大质量黑洞和恒星形成之间强烈耦合的共同演化的证据，这阻碍了我们对星系内重子过程的理解。在这里，我们报告说，从它们的整体光学光谱中测量到的附近大质量星系的恒星形成历史，取决于中心超大质量黑洞的质量。我们的结果表明，黑洞质量与早期宇宙中的气体冷却速率有关。在那些拥有更高质量中心黑洞的星系中，恒星形成的熄灭更早、更有效。观测到的黑洞质量和恒星形成效率之间的关系适用于星系生命过程中形成的所有恒星世代，揭示了黑洞活动和重子冷却之间的持续相互作用。
