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SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES AND THEIR HOST SPHEROIDS. III. THEMBH–nsphCORRELATION

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posted on 2024-07-09, 16:15 authored by Giulia Savorgnan
The Sérsic Rn1model is the best approximation known to date for describing the light distribution of stellar spheroidal and disk components, with the Sérsic index n providing a direct measure of the central radial concentration of stars. The Sérsic index of a galaxy’s spheroidal component, n sph, has been shown to tightly correlate with the mass of the central supermassive black hole, M BH. The–Mn BH sph correlation is also expected from other two well known scaling relations involving the spheroid luminosity, L sph: the–Ln sph sph and the –ML BH sph. Obtaining an accurate estimate of the spheroid Sérsic index requires a careful modeling of a galaxy’s light distribution and some studies have failed to recover a statistically significant–Mn BH sph correlation. With the aim of re-investigating the –Mn BH sph and other black hole mass scaling relations, we performed a detailed (i.e., bulge, disks, bars, spiral arms, rings, halo, nucleus, etc.) decomposition of 66 galaxies, with directly measured black hole masses, that had been imaged at 3.6 μ m with Spitzer. In this paper, the third of this series, we present an analysis of the –L n sph sph and –Mn BH sph diagrams. While early-type (elliptical+lenticular) and late-type (spiral) galaxies split into two separate relations in the –L n sph sph and – ML BH sph diagrams, they reunite into a single μ Mn BH sph 3.39 0.1 5 sequence with relatively small intrinsic scatter ( 0.25 de x ). The black hole mass appears to be closely related to the spheroid central concentration of stars, which mirrors the inner gradient of the spheroid gravitational potential.

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ISSN

1538-4357

Journal title

The Astrophysical Journal

Volume

821

Issue

2

Article number

article no. 88

Pagination

1 p

Publisher

IOP Publishing

Copyright statement

Copyright © 2016 The American Astronomical Society. The published version is reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher and can be also be located at https://doi.org/10.3847/0004-637X/821/2/88

Language

eng

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