Program: GN-2009A-Q-54

Title:Determining the low-mass end of the local Mbh-sigma relation
PI:Davor Krajnovic
Co-I(s): Richard McDermid, Michele Cappellari, Eric Emsellem, Frederic Bournaud, Leo Blitz, Martin Bureau, Roger Davies, Tim de Zeeuw, Jesus Falcon-Barroso, Ryan Houghton, Sadegh Khochfar, Harald Kuntschner, Raffaella Morganti, Thorsten Naab, Tom Oosterloo, Marc Sarzi, Paolo Serra, R.C.E van den Bosch, Glenn van den Ven, Gijs Verdoes-Kleijn, Lisa Young

Abstract

Supermassive black holes (SMBH), and the activity they generate, are fundamental in shaping both galaxies and the IGM in the proximate universe and at high redshift. The demography of SMBHs is a key element in theoretical models of structure formation. The recent realization, however, that the current sample of SMBH masses (Mbh) is biased in a complex way hinders its usefulness. We propose to use galaxies from the Atlas3D sample of early-type galaxies, which is volume-limited (40Mpc) and complete to -21.3, in K band. Our team has completed observations of Atlas3D galaxies with SAURON, which resulted in large scale 2D kinematics, crucial in the dynamical models, and luminosity weighted measurement of velocity dispersion (sigma_e) within 1 Re. Here we propose to observe with NIFS local early-types with sigma_e below 130km/s targeting an underpopulated but crucial region in Mbh-sigma_e relation. The resulting Mbh measurement will provide the low-mass end of the local Mbh-sigma_e relation, ready to be used in theoretical models and for investigation of evolution of SMBH and host galaxy properties.

Publications using this program's data