Upper Limits on the Masses of 105 Supermassive Black Holes from Hubble Space Telescope/Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph Archival Data

TL;DR

This study uses Hubble Space Telescope data to set upper limits on supermassive black hole masses in 105 nearby galaxies, revealing that most upper limits align with the known MBH-sigma relation and suggesting coevolution driven by dry mergers.

Contribution

It provides the largest set of SMBH upper limits derived from nebular line widths, extending the MBH-sigma relation analysis across diverse galaxy types and masses.

Findings

Most upper limits follow the MBH-sigma relation.

No significant trends with galaxy Hubble type or bars.

Flattening of the MBH-sigma relation at high sigma suggests coevolution via dry mergers.

Abstract

Based on the modeling of the central emission-line width measured over sub-arcsecond apertures with the Hubble Space Telescope, we present stringent upper bounds on the mass of the central supermassive black hole, MBH, for a sample of 105 nearby galaxies (D<100Mpc) spanning a wide range of Hubble types (E-Sc) and values of the central stellar velocity dispersion, sigma (58-419km/s). For the vast majority of the objects the derived MBH upper limits run parallel and above the well-known MBH-sigma relation independently of the galaxy distance, suggesting that our nebular line-width measurements trace rather well the nuclear gravitational potential. For values of sigma between 90 and 220km/s the 68% of our upper limits falls immediately above the MBH-sigma relation without exceeding the expected MBH values by more than a factor 4.1. No systematic trends or offsets are observed in this sigma range as a function of the galaxy Hubble type or with respect to the presence of a bar. For 6 of our 12 MBH upper limits with sigma<90km/s our line-width measurements are more sensitive to the stellar contribution to the gravitational potential, either due to the presence of a nuclear stellar cluster or because of a greater distance compared to the other galaxies at the low-sigma end of the MBH-sigma relation. Conversely, our MBH upper bounds appear to lie closer to the expected MBH in the most massive elliptical galaxies with values of sigma above 220km/s. Such a flattening of the MBH-sigma relation at its high-sigma end would appear consistent with a coevolution of supermassive black holes and galaxies driven by dry mergers, although better and more consistent measurements for sigma and K-band luminosity are needed for these kind of objects before systematic effects can be ruled out.