Supermassive Black Holes in Active Galactic Nuclei. II. Calibration of the Black Hole Mass–Velocity Dispersion Relationship for Active Galactic Nuclei

2004/07/14 by Christopher A. Onken, Laura Ferrarese, David Merritt +7 · 11 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysical Phenomena and Observations #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Galaxies: Formation, Evolution, Phenomena #astro-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/424655

published as Astrophys.J. 615 (2004) 645-651 · 16 pages, including 3 figures. Accepted for publication in ApJ

arxiv created 2004/07/14 · openalex publication_date 2004/11/10 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04

Abstract

We calibrate reverberation-based black hole (BH) masses in active galactic nuclei (AGNs) by using the correlation between BH mass, M BH , and bulge/spheroid stellar velocity dispersion, σ * . We use new measurements of σ * for six AGNs and published velocity dispersions for 10 others, in conjunction with improved reverberation-mapping results, to determine the scaling factor required to bring reverberation-based BH masses into agreement with the quiescent galaxy M BH -σ * relationship. The scatter in the AGN BH masses is found to be less than a factor of 3. The current observational uncertainties preclude the use of the scaling factor to discriminate between broad-line region models.

Citations

• Parametric Recovery of Line-of-Sight Velocity Distributions from Absorption-Line Spectra of Galaxies via Penalized Likelihood

Cited by

• Discovery of a strong Baldwin effect in mid-infrared AGN lines
• CO Line Width and the Black Hole–Bulge Relationship at High Redshift
• Black Holes in Pseudobulges and Spheroidals: A Change in the Black Hole–Bulge Scaling Relations at Low Mass
• The Host Galaxy and Central Engine of the Dwarf Active Galactic Nucleus POX 52
• How Mergers May Affect the Mass Scaling Relation between Gravitationally Bound Systems
• A New HiSurvey of Active Galaxies
• On the geometry of broad emission region in quasars
• A note on black hole masses estimated by the second moment in narrow-line Seyfert 1 Galaxies
• A Population of Radio‐Loud Narrow‐Line Seyfert 1 Galaxies with Blazar‐Like Properties?
• Measuring Stellar Velocity Dispersions in Active Galaxies
• Evolution of Accretion Disks around Massive Black Holes: Constraints from the Demography of Active Galactic Nuclei
• VLT/ISAAC spectra of the Hβregion in intermediate redshift quasars