AAS 207th Meeting, 8-12 January 2006
Session 102 Black Holes II
Oral, Tuesday, 2:00-3:30pm, January 10, 2006, Wilson A/B

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[102.03] The Relationship Between SMBH Mass and Gravitational Potential Energy

M.C. Aller, D.O. Richstone (U. Michigan)

The mass of the supermassive black hole is found to be well correlated with the gravitational potential energy of the galaxy's bulge, with a scatter comparable to that seen in currently accepted relations such as M-sigma and M-Mbulge for the same sample of galaxies, taken from Tremaine, S. et al. 2002, ApJ, 574, 740. Although the scatter in these functions is statistically indistinguishable, elliptical BH masses show a slight preference for correlating with energy as compared with velocity dispersion or bulge mass; offering insight into the formation and evolution mechanisms of the host galaxy-SMBH system. We acknowledge support from grants NASA NAG5-8238 and HST GO09107.01-A which made this research possible.


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