The Star-forming Torus and Stellar Dynamical Black Hole Mass in the Seyfert 1 Nucleus of NGC 3227

By Roger Davies, Jens Thomas, R. Genzel, F. Sanchez, L. Tacconi, A. Sternberg, F. Eisenhauer, R. Abuter, R. Saglia, R. Bender. 2006

183 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We report R ~ 4300 VLT SINFONI adaptive optics integral field K-band spectroscopy of the nucleus of the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 3227 at a spatial resolution of 0.″085 (7 pc). We present the morphologies and kinematics of emission lines and absorption features and give the first derivation of a black hole mass in a Seyfert 1 nucleus from stellar dynamics (marginally resolving the black hole's sphere of influence). We show that the gas in the nucleus has a mean column density of order 1024 cm-2 and that it is geometrically thick, in agreement with the standard "molecular torus" scenario. We discuss possible heating processes responsible for maintaining the vertical height of the torus. We also resolve the nuclear stellar distribution and find that within a few parsecs of the AGN there has been an intense starburst, the most recent episode of which began ~40 Myr ago but has now ceased. The current luminosity of stars within 30 pc of the AGN, ~3 × 109 L☉, is comparable to that of the AGN. We argue that the star formation has been occurring in the obscuring material. Finally, we apply Schwarzschild orbit superposition models to our full two-dimensional data and derive the mass of the black hole, paying careful attention to the input parameters, which are often uncertain. Our models yield a 1 σ range for the black hole mass of MBH = 7 × 106-2 × 107 M☉.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b756efb48cbad3fb8a5d6e7e01930edc03f0c867

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

1. Luis C. Ho
2. Jenny E. Greene
3. H. Netzer
4. P. Hopkins
5. D. M. Alexander
6. L. Hernquist
7. T. Treu
8. B. Peterson

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. B. Peterson
2. Luis C. Ho
3. M. Vestergaard
4. Jenny E. Greene
5. T. Treu
6. J. Woo
7. M. Malkan
8. A. Barth

Citations in the corpus

• A Close Look at Star Formation around Active Galactic Nuclei (2007, methodology): “When integrated over the age of the starburst, even for low supernova rates (e.g., the current rate within 30 pc of the nucleus of NGC 3227 is 0.01 yr 1; Davies et al. 2006), this represents a substantial mass of gas that has been affected by supernova remnants.”
• THE SINFONI BLACK HOLE SURVEY: THE BLACK HOLE FUNDAMENTAL PLANE REVISITED AND THE PATHS OF (CO)EVOLUTION OF SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES AND BULGES (2016, background): “6mu = 0.002 NGC3115 M/LV = 8.04M /L , D=8.4 Mpc from Magorrian et al. (1998), not corrected for G.E., AV = 0.157 NGC3227 M/LKp from Davies et al. (2006), G.E. corrected, narrow band definition NGC3245 M/LR = 3.7M /L , D=20.9 Mpc from Häring & Rix (2004), not corrected for G.E. TABLE…”
• THE BLACK HOLE MASS IN M87 FROM GEMINI/NIFS ADAPTIVE OPTICS OBSERVATIONS (2011, unknown): “Davies et al. (2006) present observations where the PSF is measured from Brackettγ in an unresolved active galactic nucleus (AGN).”
• Biases in Virial Black Hole Masses: An SDSS Perspective (2007, methodology): “…in which we have more than one mass indicator, the reverberation mapping mass is also consistent with the dynamical mass or that derived from theMBH − σ relation (e.g., Gebhardt et al. 2000b; Ferrarese et al. 2001; Nelson et al. 2004; Onken et al. 2004, 2007; Greene & Ho 2006; Davies et al. 2006).”
• The AGN Black Hole Mass Database (2014, background): “In particular, NGC 3227 and NGC 4151 both haveMBH determined from stellar dynamical modeling and from spatially-resolved gas dynamical modeling (Davies et al. 2006; Hicks & Malkan 2008; Onken et al. 2014).”
• REVISITING THE SCALING RELATIONS OF BLACK HOLE MASSES AND HOST GALAXY PROPERTIES (2012, unknown): “…= Gebhardt et al. 2007) ; (17 = Houghton et al. 2006) ; (18 = Sarzi et al. 2001) ; (19 = Devereux et al. 2003) ; (20 = Emsellem et al. 1999) ; (21 = Davies et al. 2006) ; (22 = Barth et al. 2001) ; (23 = Nowak et al. 2010) ; (24 = van den Bosch & de Zeeuw 2010) ; (25 = Kondratko et al. 2008) ;…”
• Measuring the Masses of Supermassive Black Holes (2014, unknown): “[3]Davies et al. (2006).”
• TORUS AND ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEUS PROPERTIES OF NEARBY SEYFERT GALAXIES: RESULTS FROM FITTING INFRARED SPECTRAL ENERGY DISTRIBUTIONS AND SPECTROSCOPY (2011, background): “In terms of their molecular gas, the tori contain ∼ 107M⊙, extend for tens of parsecs (typically radii of 30 pc) and have gas column densities, as derived from near-IR molecular hydrogen lines, ranging from 1 to 10 × 1023 cm−2 (Davies et al. 2006; Hicks et al. 2009).”
• The AGN-obscuring Torus: The End of the “Doughnut” Paradigm? (2006, unknown): “However, the origin of vertical motions capable of sustaining the clouds in a hydrostatic structure with was recognized from the start as problematic and H ∼ R has eluded solution thus far (e.g., Davies et al. 2006).”
• THE M87 BLACK HOLE MASS FROM GAS-DYNAMICAL MODELS OF SPACE TELESCOPE IMAGING SPECTROGRAPH OBSERVATIONS (2013, methodology): “The stellar and gasMBH measurements for NGC 3227, NGC 4258, and Cen A are consistent (Davies et al. 2006; Pastorini et al. 2007; Neumayer et al. 2007; Hicks & Malkan 2008; Siopis et al. 2009; Cappellari et al. 2009), while the stellar-dynamical mass exceeds the gas-dynamical determination by a…”
• Adaptive Optics for Astronomy (2012, methodology): “Davies et al. (2006) showed that it is possible to measure BH masses in type 1 active galactic nuclei (AGN) using spatially resolved stellar kinematics, providing a complementary method to reverberation mapping which relies on tracking the temporal variability of the broad lines.”
• THE LOW-LUMINOSITY END OF THE RADIUS–LUMINOSITY RELATIONSHIP FOR ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI (2013, background): “…NGC 4151—are sufficiently close that dynamical modeling has successfully determined their black hole masses, and both the stellar dynamical masses (Davies et al. 2006; Onken et al. 2007) and gas dynamical masses (Hicks & Malkan 2008) agree with the reverberation-based masses within the…”
• OUTFLOWS FROM ACTIVE GALACTIC NUCLEI: KINEMATICS OF THE NARROW-LINE AND CORONAL-LINE REGIONS IN SEYFERT GALAXIES, (2011, result): “This result confirms that the molecular gas structure seen on scales of a few tens of parsecs has a strong impact on physical processes directly associated with the AGN (Davies et al. 2006; MüllerSánchez et al. 2009; H09).”
• The black hole mass–stellar velocity dispersion correlation: bulges versus pseudo-bulges (2008, result): “The mass 2.0+1.4−1.3 × 107 M is a mean value of the measurement using stellar kinematics ([0.7-2.0]×107 M , Davies et al. 2006) and gas kinematics (2.3+1.1−0.5 × 107 M [corrected for distance], Hicks & Malkan 2008), which is consistent with the RM measurement ([4.2 ± 2.1] × 107 M , Peterson et al.…”