THE LOCAL BLACK HOLE MASS FUNCTION DERIVED from the M BH-P and the M BH-n RELATIONS

Burcin Mutlu-Pakdil, Marc S. Seigar, Benjamin L. Davis

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    We present a determination of the supermassive black hole (SMBH) mass function for early- and late-type galaxies in the nearby universe (z < 0.0057), established from a volume-limited sample consisting of a statistically complete collection of the brightest spiral galaxies in the southern hemisphere. The sample is defined by limiting luminosity (redshift-independent) distance, D L = 25.4 Mpc, and a limiting absolute B-band magnitude, . These limits define a sample of 140 spiral, 30 elliptical (E), and 38 lenticular (S0) galaxies. We established the Sérsic index distribution for early-type (E/S0) galaxies in our sample. Davis et al. established the pitch angle distribution for their sample, which is identical to our late-type (spiral) galaxy sample. We then used the pitch angle and the Sérsic index distributions in order to estimate the SMBH mass function for our volume-limited sample. The observational simplicity of our approach relies on the empirical relation between the mass of the central SMBH and the Sérsic index for an early-type galaxy or the logarithmic spiral-arm pitch angle for a spiral galaxy. Our SMBH mass function agrees well at the high-mass end with previous values in the literature. At the low-mass end, although inconsistencies exist in previous works that still need to be resolved, our work is more in line with expectations based on modeling of black hole evolution.

    Original languageEnglish (US)
    Article number117
    JournalAstrophysical Journal
    Volume830
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    StatePublished - Oct 20 2016

    Keywords

    • galaxies: elliptical and lenticular, cD
    • galaxies: fundamental parameters
    • galaxies: nuclei
    • galaxies: structure
    • galaxies:spiral

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Astronomy and Astrophysics
    • Space and Planetary Science

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