Megamaser disks reveal a broad distribution of black hole mass in spiral galaxies

Journal Article · Mon Aug 01 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Astrophysical Journal Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8205/826/2/L32· OSTI ID:22868415

Greene, J. E.; Goulding, A. ^[1]; Seth, A. ^[2]; Kim, M. ^[3]; Läsker, R. ^[4]; Gao, F. ^[5]; Braatz, J. A.; Condon, J.; Lo, K. Y. ^[6]; Henkel, C. ^[7]; Zhao, W. ^[8]

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1. Department of Astrophysics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (United States)
2. University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112 (United States)
3. Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, Daejeon 305-348 (Korea, Republic of)
4. Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO (FINCA), University of Turku, Väisääntie 20, 21500 Kaarina (Finland)
5. University of Science and Technology, Daejeon 305-350 (Korea, Republic of)
6. National Radio Astronomy Observatory, 520 Edgemont Road, Charlottesville, VA 22903 (United States)
7. Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, Auf dem Hügel 69, D-53121 Bonn (Germany)
8. Shanghai Observatory, 80 Nandan Road, Shanghai 200030 (China)

We use new precision measurements of black hole (BH) masses from water megamaser disks to investigate scaling relations between macroscopic galaxy properties and supermassive BH mass. The megamaser-derived BH masses span 10{sup 6}–10{sup 8} M{sub ⊙}, while all the galaxy properties that we examine (including total stellar mass, central mass density, and central velocity dispersion) lie within a narrower range. Thus, no galaxy property correlates tightly with M{sub BH} in ∼L* spiral galaxies as traced by megamaser disks. Of them all, stellar velocity dispersion provides the tightest relation, but at fixed σ{sub ∗} the mean megamaser M{sub BH} are offset by −0.6 ± 0.1 dex relative to early-type galaxies. Spiral galaxies with non-maser dynamical BH masses do not appear to show this offset. At low mass, we do not yet know the full distribution of BH mass at fixed galaxy property; the non-maser dynamical measurements may miss the low-mass end of the BH distribution due to an inability to resolve their spheres of influence and/or megamasers may preferentially occur in lower-mass BHs.

• OSTI ID: 22868415
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal Letters, Vol. 826, Issue 2; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 2041-8205
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
ACCURACY
BLACK HOLES
DENSITY
GALAXIES
MASS
SCALING
SPHERES
WATER