PRECISE BLACK HOLE MASSES FROM MEGAMASER DISKS: BLACK HOLE–BULGE RELATIONS AT LOW MASS

By Jenny E. Greene, C. Peng, Minjin Kim, C. Kuo, J. Braatz, C. Impellizzeri, J. Condon, K. Lo, Christian Henkel, M. J. Reid. 2010

194 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The black hole (BH)–bulge correlations have greatly influenced the last decade of efforts to understand galaxy evolution. Current knowledge of these correlations is limited predominantly to high BH masses (MBH≳108 M☉) that can be measured using direct stellar, gas, and maser kinematics. These objects, however, do not represent the demographics of more typical L < L* galaxies. This study transcends prior limitations to probe BHs that are an order of magnitude lower in mass, using BH mass measurements derived from the dynamics of H2O megamasers in circumnuclear disks. The masers trace the Keplerian rotation of circumnuclear molecular disks starting at radii of a few tenths of a pc from the central BH. Modeling of the rotation curves, presented by Kuo et al., yields BH masses with exquisite precision. We present stellar velocity dispersion measurements for a sample of nine megamaser disk galaxies based on long-slit observations using the B&C spectrograph on the Dupont telescope and the Dual Imaging Spectrograph on the 3.5 m telescope at Apache Point. We also perform bulge-to-disk decomposition of a subset of five of these galaxies with Sloan Digital Sky Survey imaging. The maser galaxies as a group fall below the MBH–σ* relation defined by elliptical galaxies. We show, now with very precise BH mass measurements, that the low-scatter power-law relation between MBH and σ* seen in elliptical galaxies is not universal. The elliptical galaxy MBH–σ* relation cannot be used to derive the BH mass function at low mass or the zero point for active BH masses. The processes (perhaps BH self-regulation or minor merging) that operate at higher mass have not effectively established an MBH–σ* relation in this low-mass regime.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/208763bcd0cedb60cfd3d2275ca5daa03e9968b4

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. M. Volonteri
2. Jenny E. Greene
3. Luis C. Ho
4. P. Hopkins
5. L. Hernquist
6. D. M. Alexander
7. A. Reines
8. Y. Dubois

In Instrumentation

1. M. Volonteri
2. Jenny E. Greene
3. Luis C. Ho
4. L. Hernquist
5. P. Hopkins
6. Y. Dubois
7. D. M. Alexander
8. T. Treu

Citations in the corpus

• Bulge mass is king: the dominant role of the bulge in determining the fraction of passive galaxies in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (2014, background): “Perhaps coincidentally, this is exactly where the lowest mass central black holes are detected (e.g. Greene et al. 2010), potentially further implicating AGN feedback mechanisms in our new ‘bulge-mass quenching’ picture.”
• REVISITING THE SCALING RELATIONS OF BLACK HOLE MASSES AND HOST GALAXY PROPERTIES (2012, methodology): “For consistency with the rest of our sample, we use the black hole masses from Kuo et al. (2011), which agree with the values in Greene et al. (2010) but do not include distance uncertainties in the overall uncertainty for M•.”
• Modelling reverberation mapping data – II. Dynamical modelling of the Lick AGN Monitoring Project 2008 data set (2013, methodology): “…black hole mass MBH by a dimensionless virial factor f of order unity that is calibrated by aligning the MBH–σ ∗ relations for active and inactive galaxies (Onken et al. 2004; Collin et al. 2006; Greene et al. 2010; Woo et al. 2010, 2013; Graham et al. 2011; Park et al. 2012a; Grier et al. 2013b).”
• DWARF GALAXIES WITH OPTICAL SIGNATURES OF ACTIVE MASSIVE BLACK HOLES (2013, methodology): “Instead, the ensemble of reverberation-based BH masses are calibrated using the MBH−σ? relation (Gebhardt et al. 2000b; Ferrarese et al. 2001; Nelson et al. 2004; Onken et al. 2004; Greene & Ho 2006; Park et al. 2012; Grier et al. 2013), although for some caveats see Greene et al. (2010).”
• The cosmic evolution of massive black holes in the Horizon-AGN simulation (2016, background): “Most BH masses pertain to massive, dense elliptical galaxies, while disc galaxies and low-velocity dispersion galaxies are under-represented, as well as low-mass galaxies (van den Bosch et al. 2015), with the rare exception of megamasers (Greene et al. 2010).”
• Weighing Black Holes Using Tidal Disruption Events (2018, background): “This changing mass– radius relationship means that the shortest possible peak times are achieved atM*∼0.1Me, and thus masses near 0.1 Me are favored for events in which short peak times are desired.”
• RELATIONS BETWEEN CENTRAL BLACK HOLE MASS AND TOTAL GALAXY STELLAR MASS IN THE LOCAL UNIVERSE (2015, background): “BHs in galaxies with pseudobulges also preferentially lie below the scaling relations based on ellipticals and classical bulges (also see Greene et al. 2010; Kormendy et al. 2011).”
• RESOLVING THE RADIO SOURCE BACKGROUND: DEEPER UNDERSTANDING THROUGH CONFUSION (2012, background): “This is broadly consistent with the correlation of black hole and stellar bulge masses in massive elliptical galaxies, although this correlation is not yet well established for the lower-mass black holes and bulges in late-type galaxies (Greene et al. 2010).”
• STELLAR VELOCITY DISPERSION MEASUREMENTS IN HIGH-LUMINOSITY QUASAR HOSTS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE AGN BLACK HOLE MASS SCALE (2013, background): “Observations of the megamaser sample by Greene et al. (2010) show that about half of their host galaxies (with MBH < 10 8 M⊙) fall below the MBH–σ∗ relation, which again demonstrates that different samples yield different results.”
• Coevolution (Or Not) of Supermassive Black Holes and Host Galaxies (2013, methodology): “The velocity dispersion is from Greene et al. (2010) and Vcirc is from Hyperleda.”
• THE SINFONI BLACK HOLE SURVEY: THE BLACK HOLE FUNDAMENTAL PLANE REVISITED AND THE PATHS OF (CO)EVOLUTION OF SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES AND BULGES (2016, methodology): “The M/L is computed as in Appendix C to match the average velocity dispersion measured by Greene et al. (2010) within a radius of 1.4′′ (107± 12 km/s) and using the distance of Kormendy & Ho (2013).”
• Observational evidence for intermediate-mass black holes (2017, background): “SMBHs in inactive galaxies with pseudobulges (Hu 2008; Kormendy & Ho 2013) and spiral galaxies with megamaser BH mass measurements (Greene et al. 2010; Läsker et al. 2016) are also found to fall below the MBH −Mbulge relation of early-type galaxies (Kormendy & Ho 2013), which suggests that most…”
• Black hole evolution – I. Supernova-regulated black hole growth (2015, background): “A similar deficit in BH mass is also observed for low-mass BHs (Greene et al. 2010; Jiang, Greene & Ho 2011; Graham & Scott 2015).”
• REVERBERATION MAPPING RESULTS FOR FIVE SEYFERT 1 GALAXIES (2012, background): “In these applications, the MBH–σ∗ relation is assumed to be similar in quiescent and active galaxies, but there are claims that many AGNs lie below or above the MBH–σ∗ relation at both the high and low-luminosity ends (see, for example, Dasyra et al. 2007; Greene et al. 2010; Mathur et al. 2011).”
• THE MEGAMASER COSMOLOGY PROJECT. III. ACCURATE MASSES OF SEVEN SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES IN ACTIVE GALAXIES WITH CIRCUMNUCLEAR MEGAMASER DISKS (2010, background): “A more in-depth discussion of the MBH-σ⋆ relation, including the new maser BH masses, is presented in a companion paper by Greene et al. (2010).”
• What drives the growth of black holes (2011, background): “Recent studies of lower-mass galaxies suggest a change in relationship at the low end, with an increase in scatter (e.g., Greene et al., 2008, 2010), although some of this may be driven by the prevalence of pseudobulges in disk galaxies rather than classical bulges, where the correlations are much…”