scholarly journals Refining the mass estimate for the intermediate-mass black hole candidate in NGC 3319

Author(s):  
Benjamin L. Davis ◽  
Alister W. Graham

Abstract Recent X-ray observations by Jiang et al. have identified an active galactic nucleus (AGN) in the bulgeless spiral galaxy NGC 3319, located just $14.3\pm 1.1$ Mpc away, and suggest the presence of an intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH; $10^2\leq M_\bullet/\textrm{M}_{\odot}\leq 10^5$ ) if the Eddington ratios are as high as 3 to $3\times10^{-3}$ . In an effort to refine the black hole mass for this (currently) rare class of object, we have explored multiple black hole mass scaling relations, such as those involving the (not previously used) velocity dispersion, logarithmic spiral arm pitch angle, total galaxy stellar mass, nuclear star cluster mass, rotational velocity, and colour of NGC 3319, to obtain 10 mass estimates, of differing accuracy. We have calculated a mass of $3.14_{-2.20}^{+7.02}\times10^4\,\textrm{M}_\odot$ , with a confidence of 84% that it is $\leq $ $10^5\,\textrm{M}_\odot$ , based on the combined probability density function from seven of these individual estimates. Our conservative approach excluded two black hole mass estimates (via the nuclear star cluster mass and the fundamental plane of black hole activity—which only applies to black holes with low accretion rates) that were upper limits of ${\sim}10^5\,{\textrm M}_{\odot}$ , and it did not use the $M_\bullet$ – $L_{\textrm 2-10\,\textrm{keV}}$ relation’s prediction of $\sim$ $10^5\,{\textrm M}_{\odot}$ . This target provides an exceptional opportunity to study an IMBH in AGN mode and advance our demographic knowledge of black holes. Furthermore, we introduce our novel method of meta-analysis as a beneficial technique for identifying new IMBH candidates by quantifying the probability that a galaxy possesses an IMBH.

2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (S277) ◽  
pp. 21-25
Author(s):  
Christopher D. Impey ◽  
Jonathan R. Trump ◽  
Jared M. Gabor ◽  

AbstractThe Cosmological Evolution Survey (COSMOS) is a unique tool for studying low level AGN activity and the co-evolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes. COSMOS involves the largest contiguous region of the sky ever imaged by HST; it includes very complete multiwavelength coverage, and the largest joint samples of galaxy and AGN redshifts in any deep survey. The result is a search for AGN with low black hole mass, low accretion rates, and levels of obscuration that can remove them from optical surveys. A complete census of intermediate mass black holes at redshifts of 1 to 3 is required to tell the story of the co-evolution of galaxies and their embedded, and episodically active, black holes.


2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (S312) ◽  
pp. 269-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alister W. Graham

AbstractThere is a growing array of supermassive black hole and nuclear star cluster scaling relations with their host spheroid, including a bent (black hole mass)–(host spheroid mass) Mbh–Msph relation and a different (massive compact object mass)–(host spheroid velocity dispersion) Mmco–σ relations for black holes and nuclear star clusters. By combining the observed Mbh ∝ σ5.5 relation with the observed Mnc ∝ σ1.6–2.7 relation, we derive the expression Mbh ∝ Mnc2–3.4, which should hold until the nuclear star clusters are eventually destroyed in the larger core-Sérsic spheroids. This new mass scaling relation helps better quantify the rapid evolutionary growth of massive black holes in dense star clusters, and the relation is consistently recovered when coupling the observed Mnc ∝ Msph0.6–1.0 relation with the recently observed quadratic relation Mbh ∝ Msph2 for Sérsic spheroids.


2007 ◽  
Vol 3 (S245) ◽  
pp. 259-260
Author(s):  
Joseph C. Shields ◽  
Carl Jakob Walcher ◽  
Torsten Böker ◽  
Luis C. Ho ◽  
Hans-Walter Rix ◽  
...  

AbstractCompact star clusters are commonly found in the centers of galaxies and may foster formation of intermediate-mass “seed” black holes that facilitate the growth of supermassive black holes in galaxy nuclei. Such star clusters can be studied with minimal background starlight contamination in bulgeless galaxies. We present new results that point to the presence of an accreting black hole associated with the central star cluster in the Sd galaxy NGC 1042, and discuss implications for the bulge-black hole connection.


2010 ◽  
Vol 6 (S275) ◽  
pp. 178-179
Author(s):  
Richard M. Plotkin ◽  
Sera Markoff ◽  
Scott F. Anderson ◽  
Brandon C. Kelly ◽  
Elmar Körding ◽  
...  

AbstractJets from accreting black holes appear remarkably similar over eight orders of magnitude in black hole mass, with more massive black holes generally launching more powerful jets. For example, there is an observed correlation, termed the fundamental plane of black hole accretion, between black hole mass, radio luminosity, and X-ray luminosity. Here, we probe the high-mass tail (108–109M⊙) of the accreting black hole distribution with BL Lac objects. We build SEDs for hundreds of SDSS BL Lacs, and we use these SEDs to test the blazar sequence, a proposed anti-correlation between jet power and peak frequency. We then show our BL Lacs fit on the fundamental plane, supporting the non-linear scaling of jet radiation with black hole mass. The subset of BL Lacs considered here compose the largest sample yet used in the above types of studies, reducing potential selection effects and biases.


2019 ◽  
Vol 492 (3) ◽  
pp. 3263-3271
Author(s):  
Alister W Graham

ABSTRACT It has been suggested that ultracompact dwarf (UCD) galaxies are the ‘threshed’ remains of larger galaxies. Simulations have revealed that extensive tidal-stripping may pare a galaxy back to its tightly bound, compact nuclear star cluster. It has therefore been proposed that the two-component nature of UCD galaxies may reflect the original nuclear star cluster surrounded by the paltry remnants of its host galaxy. A simple quantitative test of this theory is devised and applied here. If the mass of the central black hole (BH) in UCD galaxies, relative to the mass of the UCD galaxies’ inner stellar component, i.e. the suspected nuclear star cluster, matches with the (black hole mass)–(nuclear star cluster mass) relation observed in other galaxies, then it would provide quantitative support for the stripped galaxy scenario. Such consistency is found for four of the five UCD galaxies reported to have a massive BH. This (black hole mass)–(nuclear star cluster mass) relation is then used to predict the central BH mass in two additional UCD galaxies, and to reveal that NGC 205 and possibly NGC 404 (which only has an upper limit to its black hole mass) also follow this scaling relation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (S356) ◽  
pp. 143-143
Author(s):  
Jaya Maithil ◽  
Michael S. Brotherton ◽  
Bin Luo ◽  
Ohad Shemmer ◽  
Sarah C. Gallagher ◽  
...  

AbstractActive Galactic Nuclei (AGN) exhibit multi-wavelength properties that are representative of the underlying physical processes taking place in the vicinity of the accreting supermassive black hole. The black hole mass and the accretion rate are fundamental for understanding the growth of black holes, their evolution, and the impact on the host galaxies. Recent results on reverberation-mapped AGNs show that the highest accretion rate objects have systematic shorter time-lags. These super-Eddington accreting massive black holes (SEAMBHs) show BLR size 3-8 times smaller than predicted by the Radius-Luminosity (R-L) relationship. Hence, the single-epoch virial black hole mass estimates of highly accreting AGNs have an overestimation of a factor of 3-8 times. SEAMBHs likely have a slim accretion disk rather than a thin disk that is diagnostic in X-ray. I will present the extreme X-ray properties of a sample of dozen of SEAMBHs. They indeed have a steep hard X-ray photon index, Γ, and demonstrate a steeper power-law slope, ασx.


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (S359) ◽  
pp. 238-242
Author(s):  
Mar Mezcua

AbstractDetecting the seed black holes from which quasars formed is extremely challenging; however, those seeds that did not grow into supermassive should be found as intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) of 100 – 105 M⊙ in local dwarf galaxies. The use of deep multiwavelength surveys has revealed that a population of actively accreting IMBHs (low-mass AGN) exists in dwarf galaxies at least out to z ˜3. The black hole occupation fraction of these galaxies suggests that the early Universe seed black holes formed from direct collapse of gas, which is reinforced by the possible flattening of the black hole-galaxy scaling relations at the low-mass end. This scenario is however challenged by the finding that AGN feedback can have a strong impact on dwarf galaxies, which implies that low-mass AGN in dwarf galaxies might not be the untouched relics of the early seed black holes. This has important implications for seed black hole formation models.


2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (S316) ◽  
pp. 240-245
Author(s):  
Nora Lützgendorf ◽  
Markus Kissler-Patig ◽  
Karl Gebhardt ◽  
Holger Baumgardt ◽  
Diederik Kruijssen ◽  
...  

AbstractThe study of intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) is a young and promising field of research. If IMBH exist, they could explain the rapid growth of supermassive black holes by acting as seeds in the early stage of galaxy formation. Formed by runaway collisions of massive stars in young and dense stellar clusters, intermediate-mass black holes could still be present in the centers of globular clusters, today. We measured the inner kinematic profiles with integral-field spectroscopy for 10 Galactic globular cluster and determined masses or upper limits of central black holes. In combination with literature data we further studied the positions of our results on known black-hole scaling relations (such as M• − σ) and found a similar but flatter correlation for IMBHs. Applying cluster evolution codes, the change in the slope could be explained with the stellar mass loss occurring in clusters in a tidal field over its life time. Furthermore, we present results from several numerical simulations on the topic of IMBHs and integral field units (IFUs). N-body simulations were used to simulate IFU data cubes. For the specific case of NGC 6388 we simulated two different IFU techniques and found that velocity dispersion measurements from individual velocities are strongly biased towards lower values due to blends of neighbouring stars and background light. In addition, we use the Astrophysical Multipurpose Software Environment (AMUSE) to combine gravitational physics, stellar evolution and hydrodynamics to simulate the accretion of stellar winds onto a black hole. We find that the S-stars need to provide very strong winds in order to explain the accretion rate in the galactic center.


2018 ◽  
Vol 869 (2) ◽  
pp. 113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin L. Davis ◽  
Alister W. Graham ◽  
Ewan Cameron

2020 ◽  
Vol 80 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hao Xu ◽  
Yen Chin Ong

Abstract Hořava–Lifshitz (HL) gravity was formulated in hope of solving the non-renormalization problem in Einstein gravity and the ghost problem in higher derivative gravity theories by violating Lorentz invariance. In this work we consider the spherically symmetric neutral AdS black hole evaporation process in HL gravity in various spacetime dimensions d, and with detailed balance violation parameter $$0\leqslant \epsilon ^2\leqslant 1$$0⩽ϵ2⩽1. We find that the lifetime of the black holes under Hawking evaporation is dimensional dependent, with $$d=4,5$$d=4,5 behave differently from $$d\geqslant 6$$d⩾6. For the case of $$\epsilon =0$$ϵ=0, in $$d=4,5$$d=4,5, the black hole admits zero temperature state, and the lifetime of the black hole is always infinite. This phenomenon obeys the third law of black hole thermodynamics, and implies that the black holes become an effective remnant towards the end of the evaporation. As $$d\geqslant 6$$d⩾6, however, the lifetime of black hole does not diverge with any initial black hole mass, and it is bounded by a time of the order of $$\ell ^{d-1}$$ℓd-1, similar to the case of Schwarzschild-AdS in Einstein gravity (which corresponds to $$\epsilon ^2=1$$ϵ2=1), though for the latter this holds for all $$d\geqslant 4$$d⩾4. The case of $$0<\epsilon ^2<1$$0<ϵ2<1 is also qualitatively similar with $$\epsilon =0$$ϵ=0.


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