Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Berrier, Joel C
• Davis, Benjamin L
• Kennefick, Daniel
• Kennefick, Julia D
• Seigar, Marc S
• Barrows, Robert Scott
• Hartley, Matthew
• Shields, Doug
• Bentz, Misty C
• Lacy, Claud H S

Titel

FURTHER EVIDENCE FOR A SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE MASS-PITCH ANGLE RELATION

Ist Teil von

• The Astrophysical journal, 2013-06, Vol.769 (2), p.1-17

Ort / Verlag

United States

Erscheinungsjahr

2013

Quelle

Free E-Journal (出版社公開部分のみ）

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• We present new and stronger evidence for a previously reported relationship between galactic spiral arm pitch angle P (a measure of the tightness of spiral structure) and the mass M sub(BH) of a disk galaxy's nuclear supermassive black hole (SMBH). We use an improved method to accurately measure the spiral arm pitch angle in disk galaxies to generate quantitative data on this morphological feature for 34 galaxies with directly measured black hole masses. We find a relation of log(M/M sub([middot in circle])) = (8.21 + or - 0.16) - (0.062 + or - 0.009)P. This method is compared with other means of estimating black hole mass to determine its effectiveness and usefulness relative to other existing relations. We argue that such a relationship is predicted by leading theories of spiral structure in disk galaxies, including the density wave theory. We propose this relationship as a tool for estimating SMBH masses in disk galaxies. This tool is potentially superior when compared to other methods for this class of galaxy and has the advantage of being unambiguously measurable from imaging data alone.