2001/11/09 by Alister W. Graham, Peter Erwin, N. Caon +2 · 7 citations
Environmental Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/338500
7 pages, 1 table, 2 figures. ApJ Letters, accepted
arxiv created 2001/11/09 · openalex publication_date 2001/12/10 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
We present evidence for a strong correlation between the concentration of bulges and the mass of their central supermassive black hole ( M bh )—more concentrated bulges have more massive black holes. Using C (1/3) from Trujillo, Graham, & Caon as a measure of bulge concentration, we find that log( M bh / M ☉ ) = 6.81(±0.95) C (1/3) + 5.03 ± 0.41. This correlation is shown to be marginally stronger (Spearman's r s = 0.91) than the relationship between the logarithm of the stellar velocity dispersion and log M bh (Spearman's r s = 0.86) and has comparable or less scatter (0.31 dex in log M bh , which decreases to 0.19 dex when we use only those galaxies whose supermassive black hole radii of influence are resolved and we remove one well-understood outlying data point).