THE BLACK HOLE MASS IN M87 FROM GEMINI/NIFS ADAPTIVE OPTICS OBSERVATIONS

By K. Gebhardt, J. Adams, D. Richstone, Tod R. Lauer, S. Faber, K. Gültekin, J. Murphy, S. Tremaine. 2011

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We present the stellar kinematics in the central 2″ of the luminous elliptical galaxy M87 (NGC 4486), using laser adaptive optics to feed the Gemini telescope integral-field spectrograph, Near-infrared Integral Field Spectrograph (NIFS). The velocity dispersion rises to 480 km s−1 at 0.″2. We combine these data with extensive stellar kinematics out to large radii to derive a black hole mass equal to (6.6 ± 0.4) × 109 M☉, using orbit-based axisymmetric models and including only the NIFS data in the central region. Including previously reported ground-based data in the central region drops the uncertainty to 0.25 × 109 M☉ with no change in the best-fit mass; however, we rely on the values derived from the NIFS-only data in the central region in order to limit systematic differences. The best-fit model shows a significant increase in the tangential velocity anisotropy of stars orbiting in the central region with decreasing radius, similar to that seen at the centers of other core galaxies. The black hole mass is insensitive to the inclusion of a dark halo in the models—the high angular resolution provided by the adaptive optics breaks the degeneracy between black hole mass and stellar mass-to-light ratio. The present black hole mass is in excellent agreement with the Gebhardt & Thomas value, implying that the dark halo must be included when the kinematic influence of the black hole is poorly resolved. This degeneracy implies that the black hole masses of luminous core galaxies, where this effect is important, may need to be re-evaluated. The present value exceeds the prediction of the black hole–dispersion and black hole–luminosity relations, both of which predict about 1 × 109 M☉ for M87, by close to twice the intrinsic scatter in the relations. The high end of the black hole correlations may be poorly determined at present.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4ca47e2021f4a1de62e1ce8dee6e5329d7081471

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Citations in the corpus

The shape of the black hole photon ring: A precise test of strong-field general relativity (2020, background): “[35] K.”
Coevolution (Or Not) of Supermassive Black Holes and Host Galaxies (2013, methodology): “Recently, Gebhardt et al. (2011) add Gemini telescope integral-field spectroscopy aided by laser-guided AO; the resulting PSF has a narrow core (FWHM = 0.”
Ultralight scalars as cosmological dark matter (2016, methodology): “4) × 10(9)M as determined by observations of stellar kinematics [156].”
Black hole shadows, photon rings, and lensing rings (2019, background): “[16] K.”
Kinematics of the jet in M 87 on scales of 100–1000 Schwarzschild radii (2016, background): “Its proximity (D = 16.7 Mpc; Mei et al. 2007) combined with the large mass of its central black hole (MBH ' 6.1 × 109M ; Gebhardt et al. 2011)1 make M 87 one of the primary sources to probe jet formation and acceleration down to smallest linear scales (with 1 mas ≈ 0.08 pc ∼ 140 Schwarzschild radii…”
Constraints on black-hole charges with the 2017 EHT observations of M87* (2021, methodology): “Since the stellar dynamics measurements [27] are sensitive only to the monopole of the metric (i.”
THE STRUCTURE OF THE M87 JET: A TRANSITION FROM PARABOLIC TO CONICAL STREAMLINES (2011, background): “Recent analyses of the stellar kinematics suggest a larger mass of 6.6× 109 M⊙ (Gebhardt et al. 2011).”
Adaptive Optics for Astronomy (2012, background): “For elliptical galaxies, Gebhardt et al. (2011) argue that the main sources of uncertainty on MBH are the treatment of the dark matter halo, an incomplete orbit library, and triaxiality.”
A coordinate-independent characterization of a black hole shadow (2015, background): “Similarly, with an estimated mass of ' 6.4× 109M (Gebhardt et al. 2011) and a distance of 16 Mpc, the M87 galaxy represents an equally interesting SMBH candidate, with an angular size that is of the same order i.e., ∼ 40µas.”
REVISITING THE SCALING RELATIONS OF BLACK HOLE MASSES AND HOST GALAXY PROPERTIES (2012, background): “…et al. 2002; (2) D’Onofrio et al. 1995; (3) Graham et al. 1998; (4) Gebhardt et al. 2007; (5) Spolaor et al. 2008; (6) Simien & Prugniel 2000; (7) McConnell et al. 2012; (8) Walsh et al. 2012; (9) Gebhardt et al. 2011; (10) Jardel et al. 2011; (11) Pinkney et al. 2003; (12) Pu et al. 2010.”