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[17.07] Mining the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to trace the M-sigma correlation below 10⁶ solar masses

A. J. Barth (Caltech), J. E. Greene (CfA), L. C. Ho (OCIW)

Do dwarf galaxies and late-type spirals host central black holes with masses below 10⁶ M_\odot? Stellar-dynamical detections of black holes with such low masses are only possible for the very nearest galaxies, but in more distant objects the presence of a black hole can still be inferred if its accretion luminosity can be detected. NGC 4395 and POX 52 are two examples of Seyfert galaxies with black hole masses well below 10⁶ M_\odot, but very little is known about the demographics of such objects.

We have searched the Sloan DR1 archives to identify Seyfert galaxies that are likely to have black hole masses below 10⁶ M_\odot, using the luminosity-radius relation and the broad-line widths to derive virial mass estimates for the black holes (Greene & Ho 2004). To examine the host galaxy properties, we have begun a program to measure their stellar velocity dispersions using the ESI spectrograph at Keck. Here we present preliminary results from this project, including 12 newly identified Seyfert galaxies having stellar velocity dispersions below 70 km s^-1. The masses and velocity dispersions of these objects are consistent with an extrapolation of the local M--\sigma relation to masses below 10⁶ M_\odot.

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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 36 #2
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