Black Holes in Pseudobulges and Spheroidals: A Change in the Black Hole-Bulge Scaling Relations at Low Mass

By Jenny E. Greene, Luis C. Ho, A. Barth. 2008

146 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigate the relationship between black hole mass and host galaxy properties for active galaxies with the lowest black hole masses currently known in galaxy nuclei. HST imaging confirms that the host galaxies have correspondingly low luminosity; they are ~1 mag below L*. In terms of morphology, ~60% of the members of the sample are disk dominated, and all of these are consistent with containing a bulge or (more likely) pseudobulge, while the remainder are compact systems with no discernible disk component. In general, the compact components of the galaxies do not obey the fundamental plane of giant elliptical galaxies and classical bulges, but rather are less centrally concentrated at a given luminosity, much like spheroidal galaxies. Our results strongly confirm that a classical bulge is not a requirement for a nuclear black hole. At the same time, the observed ratio of black hole to bulge mass is nearly an order of magnitude lower in this sample than that seen for classical bulges. While the MBH-σ* relation appears to continue to low mass, it seems that black hole-galaxy scaling relations do depend on galaxy structure.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5b5cb122d468683e7503c7d20f1ac0cc4313e86a

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Citations in the corpus

Observational evidence for intermediate-mass black holes (2017, unknown): “…MBH−Mbulge relation: the BH mass of IMBHs/low-mass AGN tends to be lower at a given bulge mass than expected from an extrapolation of the relation found for classical bulges (e.g., Greene et al. 2008; Jiang et al. 2011; Graham & Scott 2013, 2015; Baldassare et al. 2015, 2017; Nguyen et al. 2017).”
Towards a complete census of AGN in nearby Galaxies: a large population of optically unidentified AGN (2009, result): “As found in previous studies, this indicates that galaxies without classical bulges can host SMBHs (e.g., Greene et al. 2008; Barth et al. 2009).”
THE MBH–LSPHEROID RELATION AT HIGH AND LOW MASSES, THE QUADRATIC GROWTH OF BLACK HOLES, AND INTERMEDIATE-MASS BLACK HOLE CANDIDATES (2012, methodology): “Our interpretation of this offset differs from Greene et al. (2008), in that we consider their sample of non-disk galaxies to be the extension of the Sérsic sequence, rather than a separate galaxy population which Greene et al. (2008) refer to as “blobs”.”
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…”
PRECISE BLACK HOLE MASSES FROM MEGAMASER DISKS: BLACK HOLE–BULGE RELATIONS AT LOW MASS (2010, background): “If low-mass galaxies do not feed their BHs very effectively, then the BH never approaches the “limiting” value set by the galaxy potential(Hu 2008; Greene et al. 2008; Younger et al. 2008).”
A ∼50,000 M⊙ SOLAR MASS BLACK HOLE IN THE NUCLEUS OF RGG 118 (2015, background): “For a sample of BHs with MBH < 2 × 106 M , Greene et al. (2008) found that most of the host galaxies were either compact systems or disk galaxies with pseudobulges.”
Doing Science with eLISA: Astrophysics and Cosmology in the Millihertz Regime (2012, background): “…105 M – 107 M are now increasingly found in low mass spiral galaxies and dwarfs with and without a bulge (Barth et al., 2004, Greene and Ho, 2004, Greene et al., 2008, Jiang et al., 2011a,b, Kuo et al., 2011, Xiao et al., 2011) and evidence exists that some of these low mass black holes of M …”
THE NON-CAUSAL ORIGIN OF THE BLACK-HOLE–GALAXY SCALING RELATIONS (2010, background): “Also, the higher scatter at low masses can be seen in both simulations and observations, the “cloud” above the z = 0 relation in our model data represents disk galaxies with small bulge masses as observed by Greene et al. (2008).”
DWARF GALAXIES WITH OPTICAL SIGNATURES OF ACTIVE MASSIVE BLACK HOLES (2013, background): “∼ 109 M , and thus do not probe the dwarf galaxy regime (Barth et al. 2008; Greene et al. 2008; Jiang et al. 2011).”