STELLAR VELOCITY DISPERSION MEASUREMENTS IN HIGH-LUMINOSITY QUASAR HOSTS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR THE AGN BLACK HOLE MASS SCALE

Journal Article · Tue Aug 20 00:00:00 EDT 2013 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/773/2/90· OSTI ID:22131032

Grier, C. J.; Martini, P.; Peterson, B. M.; Pogge, R. W.; Zu, Y. ^[1]; Watson, L. C. ^[2]; Bentz, M. C. ^[3]; Dasyra, K. M. ^[4]; Dietrich, M. ^[5]; Ferrarese, L. ^[6]

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1. Department of Astronomy, Ohio State University, 140 W 18th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210 (United States)
2. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (United States)
3. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303 (United States)
4. Observatoire de Paris, LERMA (CNRS:UMR8112), 61 Avenue de l'Observatoire, F-75014, Paris (France)
5. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Ohio University, Athens, OH 45601 (United States)
6. Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, National Research Council of Canada, 5071 West Saanich Road, Victoria BV V9E 2E7 (Canada)

We present new stellar velocity dispersion measurements for four luminous quasars with the Near-Infrared Integral Field Spectrometer instrument and the ALTAIR laser guide star adaptive optics system on the Gemini North 8 m telescope. Stellar velocity dispersion measurements and measurements of the supermassive black hole (BH) masses in luminous quasars are necessary to investigate the coevolution of BHs and galaxies, trace the details of accretion, and probe the nature of feedback. We find that higher-luminosity quasars with higher-mass BHs are not offset with respect to the M{sub BH}-{sigma}{sub *} relation exhibited by lower-luminosity active galactic nuclei (AGNs) with lower-mass BHs, nor do we see correlations with galaxy morphology. As part of this analysis, we have recalculated the virial products for the entire sample of reverberation-mapped AGNs and used these data to redetermine the mean virial factor (f) that places the reverberation data on the quiescent M{sub BH}-{sigma}{sub *} relation. With our updated measurements and new additions to the AGN sample, we obtain (f) = 4.31 {+-} 1.05, which is slightly lower than, but consistent with, most previous determinations.

• OSTI ID: 22131032
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Vol. 773, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
BLACK HOLES
GALAXIES
GALAXY NUCLEI
LUMINOSITY
MASS
OPTICS
QUASARS
SPECTROMETERS
TELESCOPES