The Black Hole Mass of NGC 4151: Comparison of Reverberation Mapping and Stellar Dynamical Measurements

TL;DR

This study estimates the black hole mass in NGC 4151 using stellar dynamical modeling and compares it with reverberation mapping results, highlighting the challenges and tentative nature of dynamical measurements.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of black hole mass estimates from stellar dynamics and reverberation mapping in NGC 4151, demonstrating consistency between methods.

Findings

Dynamical upper limit of ~4×10^7 M_sun for edge-on bulge

Best-fit dynamical mass of 4-5×10^7 M_sun for inclined bulge

Dynamical and reverberation mapping estimates are in reasonable agreement

Abstract

We present a stellar dynamical estimate of the black hole (BH) mass in the Seyfert 1 galaxy, NGC 4151. We analyze ground-based spectroscopy as well as imaging data from the ground and space, and we construct 3-integral axisymmetric models in order to constrain the BH mass and mass-to-light ratio. The dynamical models depend on the assumed inclination of the kinematic symmetry axis of the stellar bulge. In the case where the bulge is assumed to be viewed edge-on, the kinematical data give only an upper limit to the mass of the BH of ~4e7 M_sun (1 sigma). If the bulge kinematic axis is assumed to have the same inclination as the symmetry axis of the large-scale galaxy disk (i.e., 23 degrees relative to the line of sight), a best-fit dynamical mass between 4-5e7 M_sun is obtained. However, because of the poor quality of the fit when the bulge is assumed to be inclined (as determined by the noisiness of the chi^2 surface and its minimum value), and because we lack spectroscopic data that clearly resolves the BH sphere of influence, we consider our measurements to be tentative estimates of the dynamical BH mass. With this preliminary result, NGC 4151 is now among the small sample of galaxies in which the BH mass has been constrained from two independent techniques, and the mass values we find for both bulge inclinations are in reasonable agreement with the recent estimate from reverberation mapping (4.57[+0.57/-0.47]e7 M_sun) published by Bentz et al.