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A Fundamental Relation Between Compact Stellar Nuclei, Supermassive Black Holes, And Their Host Galaxies, Laura Ferrarese, Patrick Côté, Elena Dalla Bontà, David Merritt, Et Al.
A Fundamental Relation Between Compact Stellar Nuclei, Supermassive Black Holes, And Their Host Galaxies, Laura Ferrarese, Patrick Côté, Elena Dalla Bontà, David Merritt, Et Al.
Articles
Imaging surveys with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) have shown that 50–80% of low- and intermediate-luminosity galaxies contain a compact stellar nucleus at their center, regardless of host galaxy morphological type. We combine HST imaging for early-type galaxies from the ACS Virgo Cluster Survey with ground-based long-slit spectra from KPNO to show that the masses of compact stellar nuclei in Virgo Cluster galaxies obey a tight correlation with the masses of the host galaxies. The same correlation is obeyed by the supermassive black holes (SBHs) found in predominantly massive galaxies. The compact stellar nuclei in the Local Group galaxies M33 …
Efficient Merger Of Binary Supermassive Black Holes In Non-Axisymmetric Galaxies, Peter Berczik, David Merritt, Rainer Spurzem, Hans-Peter Bischof
Efficient Merger Of Binary Supermassive Black Holes In Non-Axisymmetric Galaxies, Peter Berczik, David Merritt, Rainer Spurzem, Hans-Peter Bischof
Articles
Binary supermassive black holes form naturally in galaxy mergers, but their long-termevolution is uncertain. In spherical galaxies, N-body simulations show that binary evolution stalls at separations much too large for significant emission of gravitational waves (the “final parsec problem”). Here, we follow the long-term evolution of a massive binary in more realistic, triaxial and rotating galaxy models. We find that the binary does not stall. The binary hardening rates that we observe are sufficient to allow complete coalescence of binary SBHs in 10 Gyr or less, even in the absence of collisional loss-cone refilling or gas-dynamical torques, thus providing a …
The Supermassive Black Hole In Centaurus A: A Benchmark For Gas Kinematical Measurements, Alessandro Marconi, Guia Pastorini, Franco Pacini, David J. Axon, A. Capetti, D. Macchetto, A. M. Koekemoer, E. J. Shreier
The Supermassive Black Hole In Centaurus A: A Benchmark For Gas Kinematical Measurements, Alessandro Marconi, Guia Pastorini, Franco Pacini, David J. Axon, A. Capetti, D. Macchetto, A. M. Koekemoer, E. J. Shreier
Articles
We present new HST/STIS observations of Centaurus A. [SIII] 9533A was used to study the kinematics in the nuclear region with a 0.1" spatial resolution. The STIS data and the VLT/ISAAC spectra by Marconi et al. (2001) provide independent and consistent measures of the BH mass, which are in agreement with our previous estimate based on the ISAAC data alone: MBH=(1.1+/-0.1) 10^8 Msun for a disk inclination of i=25deg or or MBH=(6.5+/-0.7) 10^7 Msun for i=35deg, the largest i value allowed by the data. We find that the choice of the intrinsic surface brightness distribution, a crucial element in the …