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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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Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, 37 #4
© 2005. The American Astronomical Soceity.