Galaxy bulges and their massive black holes: a review

TL;DR

This review traces the historical development and recent revisions of key scaling relations between massive black holes and galaxy bulges, highlighting ongoing debates and discoveries in the field.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of the evolution of black hole-galaxy scaling relations, including recent revisions and the discovery of sub-structures.

Findings

Revised the near-linear black hole-host spheroid mass relation.

Explained past disagreements over the black hole-velocity dispersion relation.

Discussed the discovery of sub-structure within the black hole-velocity dispersion diagram.

Abstract

With references to both key and oft-forgotten pioneering works, this article starts by presenting a review into how we came to believe in the existence of massive black holes at the centres of galaxies. It then presents the historical development of the near-linear (black hole)-(host spheroid) mass relation, before explaining why this has recently been dramatically revised. Past disagreement over the slope of the (black hole)-(velocity dispersion) relation is also explained, and the discovery of sub-structure within the (black hole)-(velocity dispersion) diagram is discussed. As the search for the fundamental connection between massive black holes and their host galaxies continues, the competing array of additional black hole mass scaling relations for samples of predominantly inactive galaxies are presented.