The Supermassive Black Hole in M84 Revisited
Jonelle L. Walsh (1), Aaron J. Barth (1), and Marc Sarzi (2) ((1), University of California, Irvine, (2) University of Hertfordshire)

TL;DR
This study reanalyzed the black hole mass in galaxy M84 using improved gas-dynamical modeling of archival data, resolving previous discrepancies and providing a more accurate estimate that informs galaxy-black hole scaling relations.
Contribution
It presents a comprehensive gas-dynamical analysis including intrinsic velocity dispersion and asymmetric drift correction, refining the black hole mass measurement in M84.
Findings
Black hole mass in M84 is approximately 8.5 x 10^8 solar masses.
Inclusion of velocity dispersion and asymmetric drift improves model accuracy.
Results support more precise placement of M84 in black hole-host galaxy correlations.
Abstract
The mass of the central black hole in the giant elliptical galaxy M84 has previously been measured by two groups using the same observations of emission-line gas with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) on the Hubble Space Telescope, giving strongly discrepant results: Bower et al. (1998) found M_BH = (1.5^{+1.1}_{-0.6}) x 10^9 M_sun, while Maciejewski & Binney (2001) estimated M_BH = 4 x 10^8 M_sun. In order to resolve this discrepancy, we have performed new measurements of the gas kinematics in M84 from the same archival data, and carried out comprehensive gas-dynamical modeling for the emission-line disk within ~70 pc from the nucleus. In comparison with the two previous studies of M84, our analysis includes a more complete treatment of the propagation of emission-line profiles through the telescope and STIS optics, as well as inclusion of the effects of an intrinsic…
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