The Low End of the Supermassive Black Hole Mass Function: Constraining the Mass of a Nuclear Black Hole in NGC 205 via Stellar Kinematics

By M. Valluri, L. Ferrarese, D. Merritt, C. Joseph. 2005

134 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images and spectra of the nucleated dwarf elliptical galaxy NGC 205 are combined with three-integral axisymmetric dynamical models to constrain the mass MBH of a putative nuclear black hole. This is only the second attempt, after M33, to use resolved stellar kinematics to search for a nuclear black hole with mass below 106 solar masses. We are unable to identify a best-fit value of MBH in NGC 205; however, the data impose a upper limit of 2.2 × 104 M☉ (1 σ confidence) and an upper limit of 3.8 × 104 M☉ (3 σ confidence). This upper limit is consistent with the extrapolation of the MBH-σ relation to the MBH < 106 M☉ regime. If we assume that NGC 205 and M33 both contain nuclear black holes, the upper limits on MBH in the two galaxies imply a slope of ~5.5 or greater for the MBH-σ relation. We use our three-integral models to evaluate the relaxation time and stellar collision time in NGC 205; Tr is ~108 yr or less in the nucleus, and Tcoll ≈ 1011 yr. The low value of Tr is consistent with core collapse having already occurred, but we are unable to draw conclusions from nuclear morphology about the presence or absence of a massive black hole.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

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Stellar Processes Near the Massive Black Hole in the Galactic Center (2005, background): “Like most MBHs, it is inactive, and it follows them/σsph relation (Valluri et al.2005).”
The Mass Function of Active Black Holes in the Local Universe (2007, methodology): “Dynamical measurements in the Local Group for the late-type galaxy M33 (Gebhardt et al. 2001) and the dwarf spheroidal galaxy NGC 205 (Valluri et al. 2005) show that neither hosts a BH with a mass in accordance with expectations from the MBH − σ∗ relation.”
Quantifying the coexistence of massive black holes and dense nuclear star clusters (2009, background): “Observed HST/ACS F814W (roughly Johnson Iband ) surface brightness profile for the galaxy NGC 205 from Valluri et al. (2005).”
Intermediate and extreme mass-ratio inspirals—astrophysics, science applications and detection using LISA (2007, background): “However, the existence of an MBH with a mass compatible with the M• ∝ σ relation of exponent β 4 is only ruled out observationally in the cases of M 33 and NGC 205 [118, 213, 312].”
A Log-Quadratic Relation for Predicting Supermassive Black Hole Masses from the Host Bulge Sérsic Index (2006, background): “For the Local Group galaxy NGC 221 (M32), the excess central flux above the Sérsic model may not represent a distinct additional central massive object, as is the case with the nuclei in NGC 205 (Valluri et al. 2005).”
DWARF GALAXIES WITH OPTICAL SIGNATURES OF ACTIVE MASSIVE BLACK HOLES (2013, background): “The Local Group galaxies NGC 205 (a bright early-type dwarf satellite of Andromeda), Ursa Minor, and Fornax (both classical dwarf spheroidals around the Milky Way) all have upper limits of MBH . a few ×104 M from stellar dynamics (Valluri et al. 2005; Lora et al. 2009; Jardel & Gebhardt 2012).”
The cosmic evolution of massive black holes in the Horizon-AGN simulation (2016, background): “…found in many low-mass galaxies (Reines, Greene & Geha 2013; Lemons et al. 2015; Miller et al. 2015; Paggi et al. 2015; Trump et al. 2015; Mezcua et al. 2016), but there are only upper limits for BHs in NGC 205 (Valluri et al. 2005), M33 (Gebhardt et al. 2001), Fornax (Jardel & Gebhardt 2012).”
Triaxial orbit based galaxy models with an application to the (apparent) decoupled core galaxy NGC 4365 (2007, background): “The aim is to measure the mass of the central black holes (van der Marel et al. 1998; Gebhardt et al. 2003; Valluri, Merritt & Emsellem 2004; Valluri et al. 2005; Shapiro et al. 2006; van den Bosch et al. 2006), to deduce the properties of dark haloes (e.g. Rix et al. 1997; Cretton et al. 1999;…”
THE NGC 404 NUCLEUS: STAR CLUSTER AND POSSIBLE INTERMEDIATE-MASS BLACK HOLE (2010, background): “However, the nearby galaxies M33 and NGC 205 have NSCs but no apparent central black hole (Gebhardt et al. 2001; Valluri et al. 2005), while some high mass core elliptical galaxies have MBHs but lack NSCs (Côté et al. 2006).”
Structure and Kinematics of Early-Type Galaxies from Integral Field Spectroscopy (2016, background): “…have provided most of the mass determinations of supermassive black holes in galaxies (e.g., some examples from different groups are van der Marel et al. 1998; Gebhardt et al. 2000b; Cappellari et al. 2002; Valluri et al. 2005; McConnell et al. 2011; van den Bosch et al. 2012; Rusli et al. 2013).”
Black Holes in Pseudobulges and Spheroidals: A Change in the Black Hole-Bulge Scaling Relations at Low Mass (2008, background): “…stellar dynamical constraints on the presence of nuclear BHs are within the Local Group; the late-type spiral galaxy M33 (Gebhardt et al. 2001) and the spheroidal galaxy NGC 205 (Valluri et al. 2005) have upper limits on their BHmasses significantly below expectations based on theMBH- relation.”
The Coincidence of Nuclear Star Clusters and Active Galactic Nuclei (2008, background): “Similarly, in NGC 205, the upper limit on the black hole mass is 2.2 × 104 M⊙ (Valluri et al. 2005), while the NC mass is 1.4× 106 M⊙ (De Rijcke et al. 2006), giving MBH/MNC < 1.6×10 −2.”
A New Sample of Low-Mass Black Holes in Active Galaxies (2007, background): “…of the bulgeless spiral galaxy M33 places strong limits on the presence of a dark central massive object (Gebhardt et al. 2001), while any BH in the nucleus of the dwarf spheroidal galaxy NGC 205 has been shown to lie below the low-mass extrapolation of theMBH − σ∗ relation (Valluri et al. 2005).”
Formation of supermassive black holes (2010, background): “Volonteri and Gnedin (2009) also find that of the contribution to the quasar luminosity budget is dominated by MBHs with mass < 10(6) M .”
From Supermassive Black Holes to Dwarf Elliptical Nuclei: A Mass Continuum (2006, background): “Observational searches for so-called intermediatemass black holes at the centers of smaller galaxies have been attempted, mostly without success, all the way down to the lowest mass dwarf spheroidal satellites of the Milky Way (e.g., Valluri et al. 2005; Maccarone et al. 2005; Greene & Ho 2004).”
Primordial black holes as generators of cosmic structures (2018, background): “There is also evidence that the linear relation between the SMBH and bulge mass steepens at low mass (Graham & Scott 2015), with several cases of central black holes in dwarf galaxies (Valluri et al. 2005).”
Nuclear star clusters (2009, background): “band mag/arcsec(2)) are shown with open circles, while the dashed line shows a fit to the galaxy profile outside of the NSC proper (an exponential in NGC 300 and a n 1⁄4 1:4 Sérsic function in NGC 205; data sources: Böker et al. 2002; Kim et al. 2004; Bland-Hawthorn et al. 2005; Valluri et al. 2005)”