On the Black Hole Mass-Bulge Mass Relation

We have reexamined the relation between the mass of the central black holes in nearby galaxies, Mbh, and the stellar mass of the surrounding spheroid or bulge, Mbulge. For a total of 30 galaxies bulge masses were derived through Jeans equation modeling or adopted from dynamical models in the literature. In stellar mass-to-light ratios, the spheroids and bulges span a range of a factor of 8. The bulge masses were related to well-determined black hole masses taken from the literature. With these improved values for Mbh, compared to Magorrian et al., and our redetermination of Mbulge, we find that the Mbh-Mbulge relation becomes very tight. We find Mbh ~ M with an observed scatter of 0.30 dex, a fraction of which can be attributed to measurement errors. The scatter in this relation is therefore comparable to the scatter in the relations of Mbh with σ and the stellar concentration. These results confirm and refine the work of Marconi & Hunt. For Mbulge ~ 5 × 1010 M☉ the median black hole mass is 0.14% ± 0.04% of the bulge mass.

[1]  Ralf Bender,et al.  The Demography of massive dark objects in galaxy centers , 1997, astro-ph/9708072.

[2]  Evidence for a Massive Black Hole in the S0 Galaxy NGC 4342 , 1998, astro-ph/9805324.

[3]  S. Tremaine,et al.  Hubble Space Telescope Spectroscopic Evidence for a 2 × 109 M☉ Black Hole in NGC 3115 , 1996 .

[4]  Frank C. van den BoschRoeland P. van der Marel.  Dynamics of the nuclear gas and dust disc in the E4 radio galaxy NGC 7052 , 1994, astro-ph/9412041.

[5]  T. Lauer.  High-resolution surface photometry of elliptical galaxies , 1985 .

[6]  J. Binney,et al.  Kinematics from spectroscopy with a wide slit: detecting black holes in galaxy centres , 2000, astro-ph/0010379.

[7]  R. Terlevich,et al.  Broad-band and Hα surface photometry of the central regions of nearby active galaxies — I. Observations , 2000 .

[8]  A. Marconi,et al.  The Relation between Black Hole Mass, Bulge Mass, and Near-Infrared Luminosity , 2003, astro-ph/0304274.

[9]  S. Tremaine,et al.  Eccentric-Disk Models for the Nucleus of M31 , 1995, astro-ph/0307412.

[10]  L. E. Davis,et al.  CCD surface photometry of galaxies with dynamical data. II. UBR photometry of 39 elliptical galaxies , 1990 .

[11]  H. Ford,et al.  Narrowband HST images of M87: Evidence for a disk of ionized gas around a massive black hole , 1994 .

[12]  K. Menten,et al.  A star in a 15.2-year orbit around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way , 2002, Nature.

[13]  William H. Press,et al.  Numerical Recipes in C, 2nd Edition , 1992 .

[14]  Laura Ferrarese David Merritt.  A Fundamental Relation Between Supermassive Black Holes and Their Host Galaxies , 2000, astro-ph/0006053.

[15]  Peter Erwin,et al.  A correlation between galaxy light concentration and supermassive black hole mass , 2001 .

[16]  T. Lauer,et al.  Evidence of a Supermassive Black Hole in the Galaxy NGC 1023 from the Nuclear Stellar Dynamics , 2000, astro-ph/0011204.

[17]  J. Kormendy.  Evidence for a central dark mass in NGC 4594 (the sombrero galaxy) , 1988 .

[18]  A Subarcsecond-Resolution Near-Infrared Study of Seyfert and “Normal” Galaxies. I. Imaging Data , 1999, astro-ph/9905076.

[19]  T. Lauer,et al.  Planetary Camera observations of the M87 stellar cusp , 1992 .

[20]  T. Heckman,et al.  The kinematics of stars and gas in radio galaxies , 1985 .

[21]  Ralf Bender,et al.  THE SLOPE OF THE BLACK HOLE MASS VERSUS VELOCITY DISPERSION CORRELATION , 2002, astro-ph/0203468.

[22]  M. Cappellari,et al.  The Counterrotating Core and the Black Hole Mass of IC 1459 , 2002, astro-ph/0202155.

[23]  H. Ford,et al.  Evidence for a Massive Black Hole in the Active Galaxy NGC 4261 from Hubble Space Telescope Images and Spectra , 1996 .

[24]  S. M. Fall,et al.  The kinematic properties of faint elliptical galaxies. , 1983 .

[25]  G. Illingworth,et al.  Kinematics of 12 elliptical galaxies , 1994 .

[26]  M. Cappellari,et al.  A SAURON study of M32: measuring the intrinsic flattening and the central black hole mass , 2002 .

[27]  M. Birkinshaw,et al.  The orientations of the rotation axes of radio galaxies. II - Stellar rotation curves and velocity dispersion profiles , 1988 .

[28]  Samuel Harvey Moseley,et al.  Morphology, near infrared luminosity, and mass of the galactic bulge from Cobe dirbe observations , 1995 .

[29]  UK,et al.  The microlensing optical depth of the COBEbulge , 1997 .

[30]  Ralf Bender,et al.  A Relationship between Nuclear Black Hole Mass and Galaxy Velocity Dispersion , 2000, astro-ph/0006289.

[31]  C. Gwinn,et al.  VLBI Imaging of Water Maser Emission from a Nuclear Disk in NGC 1068 , 1997 .

[32]  Axisymmetric Dynamical Models of the Central Regions of Galaxies , 2002, astro-ph/0209483.

[33]  T. Heckman,et al.  Multicolor surface photometry of 17 ellipticals , 1989 .

[34]  Matthew A. Bershady,et al.  Linear Regression for Astronomical Data with Measurement Errors and Intrinsic Scatter , 1996, astro-ph/9605002.

[35]  A. Dressler.  Studying the internal kinematics of galaxies using the calcium infrared triplet. , 1984 .

[36]  Evidence for a Supermassive Black Hole in the S0 Galaxy NGC 3245 , 2000, astro-ph/0012213.

[37]  S. T. Buckland,et al.  An Introduction to the Bootstrap. , 1994 .

[38]  R. Bender,et al.  Line-of-sight velocity distributions of elliptical galaxies , 1994 .

[39]  H. Ford,et al.  Nuclear Disks of Gas and Dust in Early-Type Galaxies and the Hunt for Massive Black Holes: Hubble Space Telescope Observations of NGC 6251 , 1998, astro-ph/9811319.

[40]  S. Tremaine,et al.  Axisymmetric, Three-Integral Models of Galaxies: A Massive Black Hole in NGC 3379 , 1999, astro-ph/9912026.

[41]  Gerard A. Luppino,et al.  The SBF Survey of Galaxy Distances. IV. SBF Magnitudes, Colors, and Distances , 2000, astro-ph/0011223.

[42]  V. Marel,et al.  Velocity profiles of galaxies with claimed black holes – III. Observations and models for M87 , 1994 .

[43]  C. Kochanek.  The dynamics of luminous galaxies in isothermal halos , 1994 .

[44]  H. Ford,et al.  Hubble Space Telescope photometry of the central regions of Virgo cluster elliptical galaxies. 3: Brightness profiles , 1994 .