The masses of black holes in the nuclei of spirals |
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Authors: | Paolo Salucci Charu Ratnam Pierluigi Monaco Luigi Danese |
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Institution: | International School for Advanced Studies, SISSA, Via Beirut 2–4, I-34013 Trieste, Italy;Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore 560012, India; Institute of Astronomy, Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA |
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Abstract: | We use the innermost kinematics of spirals to investigate whether these galaxies could host the massive black hole remnants that once powered the quasi-stellar object (QSO) phenomenon. Hundreds of rotation curves of early- and late-type spirals are used to place upper limits on the central black hole (BH) masses. We find that (i) in late-type spirals, the central massive dark objects (MDOs) are about 10–100 times smaller than the MDOs detected in ellipticals, and (ii) in early-type spirals, the central bodies are likely to be in the same mass range as the elliptical MDOs. As a consequence, the contribution to the QSO/active galactic nuclei (AGN) phenomenon by the BH remnants eventually hosted in spirals is negligible: ρ BH(Sb–Im)<6×104 M⊙ Mpc−3 . We find several hints that the MDO mass versus bulge mass relationship is significantly steeper in spirals than in ellipticals, although the very issue of the existence of such a relation for late Hubble type objects remains open. The upper limits on the masses of the BHs resident in late-type spirals are stringent: M BH106–107 M⊙, indicating that only low-luminosity activity could possibly have occurred in these objects . |
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Keywords: | black hole physics galaxies: general quasars: general galaxies: spiral |
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