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The Growth of Black Holes and Bulges at the Cores of Cooling Flows

Central cluster galaxies (cDs) in cooling flows are growing rapidly through gas accretion and star formation. At the same time, AGN outbursts fueled by accretion onto supermassive black holes are generating X-ray cavity systems and driving outflows that exceed those in powerful quasars. We show that the resulting bulge and black hole growth follows a trend that is roughly consistent with the slope of the local (Magorrian) relation between bulge and black hole mass for nearby quiescent ellipticals. However, a large scatter suggests that cD bulges and black holes do not always grow in lock-step. New measurements made with XMM, Chandra, and FUSE of the condensation rates in cooling flows are now approaching or are comparable to the star formation rates, alleviating the need for an invisible sink of cold matter. We show that the remaining radiation losses can be offset by AGN outbursts in more than half of the systems in our sample, indicating that the level of cooling and star formation is regulated by AGN feedback.