The Spitzer/IRAC view of black hole–bulge scaling relations

By E. Sani, A. Marconi, L. Hunt, G. Risaliti. 2010

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We present a mid-infrared investigation of the scaling relations between supermassive black hole masses (M BH ) and the structural parameters of the host spheroids in local galaxies. This work is based on 2D bulge-disc decompositions of Spitzer/IRAC 3.6 μm images of 57 galaxies with M BH estimates. We first verify the accuracy of our decomposition by examining the Fundamental Plane (FP) of spheroids at 3.6 μm. Our estimates of effective radii (R e ) and average surface brightnesses, combined with velocity dispersions from the literature, define a FP relation consistent with previous determinations but doubling the observed range in R e . None of our galaxies is an outlier of the FP, demonstrating the accuracy of our bulge-disc decomposition which also allows us to independently identify pseudo-bulges in our sample. We calibrate M/L at 3.6 μm by using the tight M dyn ―L bul relation (∼0.1 dex intrinsic dispersion) and find that no colour corrections are required to estimate the stellar mass. The 3.6 μm luminosity is thus the best tracer of stellar mass yet studied. We then explore the connection between M BH and bulge structural parameters (luminosity, mass, effective radius). We find tight correlations of M BH with both 3.6 μm bulge luminosity and dynamical mass (M BH /M dyn ∼ 1/1000), with intrinsic dispersions of ∼0.35 dex, similar to the M BH ―σ relation. Our results are consistent with previous determinations at shorter wavelengths. By using our calibrated M/L, we rescale M BH ―L bul to obtain the M BH ―M * relation, which can be used as the local reference for high-z studies which probe the cosmic evolution of M BH ―galaxy relations and where the stellar mass is inferred directly from luminosity measurements. The analysis of pseudo-bulges shows that four out of nine lie on the scaling relations within the observed scatter, while those with small M BH are significantly displaced. We explore the different origins for such behaviour while considering the possibility of nuclear morphological components not reproduced by our 2D decomposition.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/509db45a3257c8102325561b53e47f51144abf24

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Citations in the corpus

THE MBH–LSPHEROID RELATION AT HIGH AND LOW MASSES, THE QUADRATIC GROWTH OF BLACK HOLES, AND INTERMEDIATE-MASS BLACK HOLE CANDIDATES (2012, background): “L relation have continued to be largely dominated by luminous spheroids with Mbh & 10 7–108M⊙, and have continued to fit a straight line to the data (e.g. Sani et al. 2011; Vika et al. 2011; McConnell et al. 2011a; Beifiori et al. 2012).”
REVISITING THE SCALING RELATIONS OF BLACK HOLE MASSES AND HOST GALAXY PROPERTIES (2012, background): “For the M• − L relation, Sani et al. (2011) report different M•−L3.”
On the correlations between galaxy properties and supermassive black hole mass (2011, background): “6) is consistent within the errors with McLure & Dunlop (2002), Marconi & Hunt (2003), Aller & Richstone (2007) and Sani et al. (2011) and slightly shallower than Häring & Rix (2004).”
Black hole evolution – I. Supernova-regulated black hole growth (2015, methodology): “Measurements of the BH mass correlation with the pseudo-bulge mass show a larger scatter and fall below the correlation between BH mass and classical bulge relation (Hu 2008; Kormendy, Bender & Cornell 2011; Sani et al. 2011).”
Unification of X-ray winds in Seyfert galaxies: from ultra-fast outflows to warm absorbers (2012, methodology): “This method has been widely used in fitting datasets in the astronomical community (e.g., Sani et al. 2011).”
THE M87 BLACK HOLE MASS FROM GAS-DYNAMICAL MODELS OF SPACE TELESCOPE IMAGING SPECTROGRAPH OBSERVATIONS (2013, background): “…properties of the host galaxy, such as the bulge stellar velocity dispersion (σ⋆; e.g., Ferrarese & Merritt 2000; Gebhardt et al. 2000b; Tremaine et al. 2002; Gültekin et al. 2009) and the luminosity (Lbul; e.g., Dressler 1989; Kormendy & Richstone 1995; Marconi & Hunt 2003; Sani et al. 2011).”
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): “Sani et al. (2011) quote Re = 58′′, which is definitely too large.”
An ALMA [C ii] Survey of 27 Quasars at z > 5.94 (2018, background): “The typical mass ratio is ~M M 0.002BH host (e.g., Marconi & Hunt 2003; Häring & Rix 2004; Sani et al. 2011; Kormendy & Ho 2013; a factor ∼10 lower according to Reines & Volonteri 2015).”
THE EMISSION BY DUST AND STARS OF NEARBY GALAXIES IN THE HERSCHEL KINGFISH SURVEY (2011, result): “Note that other models (e.g., Bell et al. 2003; Sani et al. 2011) yield relatively similar but not identical stellar masses for these galaxies; we refer the reader to Zibetti et al. (2009) for a comparison with and discussion of other models.”
Expected properties of the first gravitational wave signal detected with pulsar timing arrays (2015, methodology): “…galaxy pair two SBHs with masses drawn from 13 different SBH-galaxy relations found in the literature (Häring & Rix 2004; Gültekin et al. 2009; Sani et al. 2011; Graham et al. 2011; Graham 2012; Graham & Scott 2013; Beifiori et al. 2012; McConnell & Ma 2013; Kormendy & Ho 2013), spanning a…”
Systematic investigation of the expected gravitational wave signal from supermassive black hole binaries in the pulsar timing band (2012, methodology): “Given the bulge mass, we estimateLi by inverting theMbulge−Li relation given by Sani et al. (2011), and we computeσ by fitting a broken power-law to thez = 0 σ − Mbulge data presented by Robertson et al. (2006).”
CO-EVOLUTION OF GALACTIC NUCLEI AND GLOBULAR CLUSTER SYSTEMS (2013, background): “Horizontal dotted lines on the right show the range of the central black hole mass fraction, from Sani et al. (2011); Kormendy & Ho (2013); Graham & Scott (2013). a later epoch ofzi = 3.”
Selection bias in dynamically measured supermassive black hole samples: its consequences and the quest for the most fundamental relation (2016, background): “6µ luminosities and effective radii derived from Sérsic plus exponential fits by Sani et al. (2011).”