A photometric method to determine supermassive black hole masses
Astrophysics
2012-04-26 v1
Abstract
We report the discovery of a strong correlation between the shape of a bulge's light-profile and the mass of its central supermassive black hole (M_{bh}). We find that log(M_{bh}/M_{sun}) = 2.91(+/-0.38)log(n) + 6.37(+/-0.21), where `n' is the Sersic r^{1/n} shape index of the bulge. This correlation is marginally stronger than the relationship between the logarithm of the stellar velocity dispersion and log(M_{bh}) and has comparable scatter. It therefore offers a cheap (in terms of telescope time) alternative to estimating the masses of supermassive black holes.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0206248,
title = {A photometric method to determine supermassive black hole masses},
author = {A. W. Graham and P. Erwin and N. Caon and I. Trujillo},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0206248},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
2 pages, Conference presentation: Galaxy Evolution, Theory & Observations