THE SINFONI BLACK HOLE SURVEY: THE BLACK HOLE FUNDAMENTAL PLANE REVISITED AND THE PATHS OF (CO)EVOLUTION OF SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES AND BULGES

By R. Saglia, M. Opitsch, P. Erwin, Jens Thomas, A. Beifiori, Maximilian Fabricius, X. Mazzalay, N. Nowak, S. Rusli, R. Bender. 2016

137 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigate the correlations between the black hole (BH) mass MBH, the velocity dispersion σ, the bulge mass MBu, the bulge average spherical density &rgr; h ?> , and its spherical half-mass radius rh, constructing a database of 97 galaxies (31 core ellipticals, 17 power-law ellipticals, 30 classical bulges, and 19 pseudobulges) by joining 72 galaxies from the literature to 25 galaxies observed during our recent SINFONI BH survey. For the first time we discuss the full error covariance matrix. We analyze the well-known MBH–σ and MBH–MBu relations and establish the existence of statistically significant correlations between MBu and rh and anticorrelations between MBu and &rgr; h ?> . We establish five significant bivariate correlations (MBH–σ–ρh, MBH–σ–rh, MBH–MBu–σ, MBH–MBu–ρh, MBH–MBu–rh) that predict MBH of 77 core and power-law ellipticals and classical bulges with measured and intrinsic scatter as small as ≈ 0.36 ?> dex and ≈ 0.33 ?> dex, respectively, or 0.26 dex when the subsample of 45 galaxies defined by Kormendy & Ho is considered. In contrast, pseudobulges have systematically lower MBH but approach the predictions of all of the above relations at spherical densities &rgr; h ≥ 10 10 M ⊙ kpc − 3 ?> or scale lengths r h ≤ 1 kpc ?> . These findings fit in a scenario of coevolution of BH and classical-bulge masses, where core ellipticals are the product of dry mergers of power-law bulges and power-law ellipticals and bulges the result of (early) gas-rich mergers and of disk galaxies. In contrast, the (secular) growth of BHs is decoupled from the growth of their pseudobulge hosts, except when (gas) densities are high enough to trigger the feedback mechanism responsible for the existence of the correlations between MBH and galaxy structural parameters.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/79322ce9813d61a0c26481f98ed634074d3a743b

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Citations in the corpus

Nuclear star clusters (2009, unknown): “…(13) Krajnović et al. (2018), (14) Bower et al. (2001), (15) Emsellem et al. (1999), (16) Gebhardt et al. (2003), (17) Gültekin et al. (2009), (18) Saglia et al. (2016), (19) Pechetti et al. (2017), (20) Gebhardt et al. (2001), (21) Neumayer and Walcher (2012), (22) Geha et al. (2002), (23)…”
The Galaxy in Context: Structural, Kinematic, and Integrated Properties (2016, background): “For M • =4.2 × 106 M and a bulge velocity dispersion of σ 113 km s−1 (Section 4.2.3), the Milky Way falls below the bestfitting (M • − σ ) relation for elliptical galaxies and classical bulges by a factor of ∼5–6 (Kormendy & Ho 2013, Saglia et al. 2016).”
Selection bias in dynamically measured supermassive black hole samples: its consequences and the quest for the most fundamental relation (2016, methodology): “Same as Figure 8, but for bulge stellar masses and half-lightradii from Saglia et al. (2016).”