THE BLACK HOLE MASS, STELLAR MASS-TO-LIGHT RATIO, AND DARK HALO IN M87

By K. Gebhardt, Jens Thomas. 2009

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We model the dynamical structure of M87 (NGC4486) using high spatial resolution long-slit observations of stellar light in the central regions, two-dimensional stellar light kinematics out to half of the effective radius, and globular cluster velocities out to eight effective radii. We simultaneously fit for four parameters: black hole mass, dark halo core radius, dark halo circular velocity, and stellar mass-to-light (M/L) ratio. We find a black hole mass of 6.4(±0.5) × 109 M☉ (the uncertainty is 68% confidence marginalized over the other parameters). The stellar M/LV = 6.3 ± 0.8. The best-fit dark halo core radius is 14 ± 2 kpc, assuming a cored logarithmic potential. The best-fit dark halo circular velocity is 715 ± 15 km s−1. Our black hole mass is over a factor of 2 larger than previous stellar dynamical measures, and our derived stellar M/L ratio is two times lower than previous dynamical measures. When we do not include a dark halo, we measure a black hole mass and stellar M/L ratio that is consistent with previous measures, implying that the major difference is in the model assumptions. The stellar M/L ratio from our models is very similar to that derived from stellar population models of M87. The reason for the difference in the black hole mass is because we allow the M/L ratio to change with radius. The dark halo is degenerate with the stellar M/L ratio, which is subsequently degenerate with the black hole mass. We argue that dynamical models of galaxies that do not include the contribution from a dark halo may produce a biased result for the black hole mass. This bias is especially large for a galaxy with a shallow light profile such as M87, and may not be as severe in galaxies with steeper light profiles unless they have a large stellar population change with radius.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8ea259f05942b8bad1d82fc1707a3987d4fe8ea9

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Citations in the corpus

PRECISE BLACK HOLE MASSES FROM MEGAMASER DISKS: BLACK HOLE–BULGE RELATIONS AT LOW MASS (2010, methodology): “Stellar dynamical methods are sensitive to assumptions about galaxy anisotropy and radial variation in dark matter fraction that are not well constrained observationally in general (e.g., Gebhardt & Thomas 2009; van den Bosch & de Zeeuw 2010).”
An expanded Mbh–σ diagram, and a new calibration of active galactic nuclei masses (2010, background): “…had previously been under-represented in the Mbh–σ diagram, along with (ii) increased black hole masses at the high-mass end of the Mbh–σ diagram (e.g. Gebhardt & Thomas 2009; Shen & Gebhardt 2010; van den Bosch & de Zeeuw 2010) and (iii) the use of a 10 per cent, rather than a rather optimistic…”
FERMI LARGE AREA TELESCOPE GAMMA-RAY DETECTION OF THE RADIO GALAXY M87 (2009, background): “Near its central∼ (3− 6)×109 solar mass supermassive black hole (Macchetto et al. 1997; Gebhardt & Thomas 2009), the jet base has been imaged down to∼0.01 pc resolution (∼ 15− 30× the Schwarzschild radius, Junor et al. 1999; Ly et al. 2007; Acciari et al. 2009).”
THE BLACK HOLE MASS IN M87 FROM GEMINI/NIFS ADAPTIVE OPTICS OBSERVATIONS (2011, methodology): “Gebhardt & Thomas (2009) combine the Hubble Space Telescope images of Lauer et al. (1992) with the ground-based data of Kormendy et al. (2009) at larger radii.”
A Reconnection Switch to Trigger gamma-Ray Burst Jet Dissipation (2010, background): “…(similar arguments apply to blazars), which has a BH with mass M ≈ 6 × 109 M accreting at Ṁ ∼ 10−2 M yr−1 with a bolometric luminosity of Lbol ∼ 1042 erg s−1 (Gebhardt & Thomas 2009), and so operates at a radiative efficiency of the order of η 0.01 corresponding to a low-luminosity radiatively…”
THE M87 BLACK HOLE MASS FROM GAS-DYNAMICAL MODELS OF SPACE TELESCOPE IMAGING SPECTROGRAPH OBSERVATIONS (2013, methodology): “…libraries that better sample the phasespace occupied by tangential orbits, using triaxial geometries, and accounting for a spatially varying stellar massto-light ratio (Gebhardt & Thomas 2009; Shen & Gebhardt 2010; van den Bosch & de Zeeuw 2010; Schulze & Gebhardt 2011; McConnell et al. 2013).”
REVERBERATION MAPPING MEASUREMENTS OF BLACK HOLE MASSES IN SIX LOCAL SEYFERT GALAXIES (2010, background): “…are present in the direct, dynamical mass measurements of the BHs in quiescent galaxies due to model-dependencies of the mass derivation (e.g., Gebhardt & Thomas 2009 find more than a factor of two difference in the measured BH mass in M87 when they include a dark matter halo in their model;…”
Coevolution (Or Not) of Supermassive Black Holes and Host Galaxies (2013, methodology): “Gebhardt & Thomas (2009) fit a variety of kinematic measurements, including two-dimensional spectroscopy from SAURON (Emsellem et al. 2004) and higher-resolution, long-slit spectroscopy from van der Marel et al. (1994a: seeing FWHM = 0.”
CO-EVOLUTION OF GALACTIC NUCLEI AND GLOBULAR CLUSTER SYSTEMS (2013, methodology): “This simple two-component model provides an accurate fit to the overall mass distribution obtained by Gebhardt & Thomas (2009) up to 100kpc. Based on the adopted stellar profile, we generate the initial positions of∼ 400,000 model clusters, corresponding to an initial cluster fractionfGC,i = 0.04.”
THE SINFONI BLACK HOLE SURVEY: THE BLACK HOLE FUNDAMENTAL PLANE REVISITED AND THE PATHS OF (CO)EVOLUTION OF SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES AND BULGES (2016, unknown): “…= 2.51M /L , D=15.7 Mpc from Cappellari et al. (2006), G.E. corrected AV = 0.153, AI = 0.09, (V − I) = 1.306 NGC4473 M/LV = 6.8M /L , D=17 Mpc from Schulze & Gebhardt (2011), not corrected for G.E., AV = 0.094 NGC4486 M/LV = 6.3M /L , D=17.9 Mpc from Gebhardt & Thomas (2009), not corrected forG.”
The size of the jet launching region in M87 (2011, background): “Its mass is ≃ 6.4×109M⊙ (Gebhardt & Thomas 2009; Gebhardt et al. 2011), ∼1600 times larger than Sgr A*.”
REVISITING THE SCALING RELATIONS OF BLACK HOLE MASSES AND HOST GALAXY PROPERTIES (2012, background): “…measurements of M• ∼ 1010M in the brightest cluster galaxies NGC 4889 and NGC 3842 (McConnell et al. 2011a), new measurements of M• > 10 9M in seven more galaxies (Rusli et al. 2011; Rusli 2012), and updated measurements increasing M• in M87 and M60 (Gebhardt & Thomas 2009; Shen & Gebhardt 2010).”