Hard X-rays from Emission Line Galaxies and the X-ray Background: A Test for Advection Dominated Accretion with Radio Sources

Abstract

Recent studies of the cosmic X-ray background (XRB) have suggested the possible existence of a population of relatively faint sources with hard X-ray spectra; however, the emission mechanism remains unclear. If the hard X-ray emission is from the radiatively inefficient, advection dominated accretion flows (ADAFs) around massive black holes in galactic nuclei, X-ray luminosity and radio luminosity satisfy the approximate relation $L_R\sim 7\times 10^{35}(ν/15GHz)^{7/5}(M/10^7M_{\odot}) (L_x/10^{40} erg s^{-1})^{1/10} erg s^{-1}$ where $L_R=νL_ν$ is the radio luminosity at frequency $ν$, $M$ is the mass of the accreting black hole, and $10^{40} \simle L_x\simle 10^{42} erg s^{-1}$ is the 2-10 keV X-ray luminosity. These sources are characterized by inverted radio spectra $I_ν\propto ν^{2/5}$. For example, an ADAF X-ray source with luminosity $L_x\sim 10^{41} erg s^{-1}$ has a nuclear radio luminosity of $\sim 4\times 10^{36}(M/3\times 10^7M_{\odot}) erg s^{-1}$ at $\sim 20$ GHz and if at a distance of $\sim 10 (M/3\times 10^7M_{\odot})^{1/2} Mpc$ would be detected as a $\sim 1mJy$ point radio source. High frequency ($\sim 20 GHz$), high angular resolution radio observations provide an important test of the ADAF emission mechanism. Since $L_R$ depends strongly on black hole mass and only weakly on X-ray luminosity, the successful measurement of nuclear radio emission could provide an estimate of black hole mass. Because the X-ray spectra produced by ADAFs are relatively hard, sources of this emission are natural candidates for contributing to the hard, $>2$ keV, background.