Supermassive Black Holes in Galactic Nuclei: Past, Present and Future Research

By L. Ferrarese, H. C. Ford. 2004

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This review discusses the current status of supermassive black hole research, as seen from a purely observational standpoint. Since the early ‘90s, rapid technological advances, most notably the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, the commissioning of the VLBA and improvements in near-infrared speckle imaging techniques, have not only given us incontrovertible proof of the existence of supermassive black holes, but have unveiled fundamental connections between the mass of the central singularity and the global properties of the host galaxy. It is thanks to these observations that we are now, for the first time, in a position to understand the origin, evolution and cosmic relevance of these fascinating objects.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/639c70a52b1d2af545c145153ecef52b58be6a99

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Citations in the corpus

THE LICK AGN MONITORING PROJECT: THE MBH–σ* RELATION FOR REVERBERATION-MAPPED ACTIVE GALAXIES (2010, methodology): “14 Institute of Astronomy, School of Science, University of Tokyo, 2-21-1 Osawa, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-0015, Japan. quiescent galaxies (for reviews, see Kormendy 2004; Ferrarese & Ford 2005).”
The Low End of the Supermassive Black Hole Mass Function: Constraining the Mass of a Nuclear Black Hole in NGC 205 via Stellar Kinematics (2005, methodology): “The upper limits on the IBH masses in M33 and NGC 205 are both inconsistent with the shallower MBHrelation advocated by Tremaine et al. (2002), but not with the Ferrarese & Ford (2005) or Ferrarese & Merritt (2000) relations.”
Faint high-redshift AGN in the Chandra deep field south: the evolution of the AGN luminosity function and black hole demography (2011, methodology): “We then evaluate the stellar mass functions of active galaxies by converting the SMBH mass into galaxy stellar mass using the Magorrian relationship (Ferrarese & Ford 2005; Shankar et al. 2009a, and references therein).”
AGN wind scaling relations and the co-evolution of black holes and galaxies (2017, background): “SMBH mass and host bulge properties – such as velocity dispersion, luminosity, and mass – were found to closely correlate with each other (Gebhardt et al. 2000; Ferrarese & Ford 2005; Kormendy & Ho 2013, and references therein, but see also Shankar et al. 2016, 2017).”
Black-hole binaries, gravitational waves, and numerical relativity (2010, background): “Stellar black-hole binaries and the lower mass end of the IMBH binaries radiate in the high frequency band, fGW ∼ (10 − 104)Hz, which is already being observed by ground-based laser interferometer detectors such as LIGO (Abbott et al., 2009b), and will be observed by the advanced detectors by ∼ 2016”
An expanded Mbh–σ diagram, and a new calibration of active galactic nuclei masses (2010, background): “While this is equivalent to the (symmetrical regression)-derived slope reported by Ferrarese & Merritt (2000) and Ferrarese & Ford (2005), one needs to keep in mind that their slope pertained to a classical (barred plus unbarred) galaxy sample.”
The black hole mass – spheroid luminosity relation (2007, methodology): “Finally, as noted by Ferrarese & Ford (2005), NGC 4594 has not yet had its SMBH mass acquired using a three-integral model, and so its mass may therefore be in error.”
EFFICIENT MERGER OF BINARY SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES IN MERGING GALAXIES (2011, background): “While astronomical evidence for the existence of SMBHs with masses M• > 10 6M⊙ in galaxy spheroids beyond the Local Group is increasingly compelling (Ferrarese & Ford 2005), the evidence for SMBHs with masses ≤ 106M⊙, which lie more nearly in the LISA band, is still largely circumstantial (van der…”
THE NEXT GENERATION VIRGO CLUSTER SURVEY (NGVS). I. INTRODUCTION TO THE SURVEY (2012, background): “The properties of these SMBHs are in turn linked to those of their host galaxies through a variety of scaling relations (see, e.g., the review of Ferrarese & Ford 2005) that are generally interpreted as prima facie evidence for the importance of nuclear inflows and AGN feedback in galaxy formation.”
Refining the fundamental plane of accreting black holes (2006, methodology): “The mass estimate using the M-σ relation is independent of the distance of the source (cf., Ferrarese & Ford 2005).”
The mean star formation rate of X-ray selected active galaxies and its evolution from z~2.5: results from PEP-Herschel (2012, background): “…between the properties of nuclear supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and the spheroids of their host galaxies (Magorrian et al. 1998; Ferrarese & Merritt 2000; Ferrarese et al. 2001; Marconi & Hunt 2003; Ferrarese & Ford 2005; Gültekin et al. 2009; Gebhardt et al. 2000; Tremaine et al. 2002).”
The local nanohertz gravitational-wave landscape from supermassive black hole binaries (2017, background): “Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are widely held to exist at the heart of massive galaxies (Ferrarese & Ford 2005).”
HERSCHEL-ATLAS GALAXY COUNTS AND HIGH-REDSHIFT LUMINOSITY FUNCTIONS: THE FORMATION OF MASSIVE EARLY-TYPE GALAXIES (2011, background): “In addition, ETGs were found to host supermassive black holes whose mass is proportional to the bulge and to the halo mass of the host galaxy (see Magorrian et al. 1998; also Ferrarese & Ford 2005 for a review).”
Accretion into the central cavity of a circumbinary disc (2012, background): “1 IN T RO D U C T I O N Massive black holes (MBHs) appear to reside in the nuclei of most nearby galaxies (see, e.g. reviews by Kormendy & Richstone 1995; Ferrarese & Ford 2005).”
Quasar feedback revealed by giant molecular outflows (2010, background): “…of super-massive back holes (SMBHs) at the centre of local bulges and the correlations between thir masses and bulge properties like mass, luminosity and velocity dispersion (Ferrarese & Ford 2005 and references therein), suggest tight links between the evolution of AGN and their host galaxies.”
Modeling Kicks from the Merger of Generic Black Hole Binaries (2008, result): “Barring mechanisms to retain supermassive black holes after major mergers, one would expect tens of percent of merged galaxies to have no central black hole, in strong contradiction with observations (see Ferrarese & Ford 2005).”
Radio and millimeter continuum surveys and their astrophysical implications (2009, background): “2004) which are hosted by the most massive galaxies (Ferrarese and Ford 2005).”