Science with an ngVLA: Precision Gas-dynamical Mass Measurement of Supermassive Black Holes with the ngVLA

TL;DR

The paper discusses how the next-generation Very Large Array (ngVLA) can improve the precision of supermassive black hole mass measurements through high-resolution, sensitive observations of circumnuclear gas disks, building on lessons from ALMA data.

Contribution

It demonstrates the potential of ngVLA to produce benchmark black hole mass measurements by resolving molecular gas kinematics at unprecedented spatial resolutions.

Findings

ngVLA can resolve emission at 50-100 mas from black holes

High sensitivity enables precise gas-dynamical modeling

Comparison with ALMA shows ngVLA's superior resolution and efficiency

Abstract

Emission line observations of circumnuclear gas disks in the ALMA era have begun to resolve molecular gas tracer kinematics near supermassive black holes (BHs), enabling highly precise mass determination in the best cases. The ngVLA is capable of extremely high spatial resolution imaging of the CO(1-0) transition at 115 GHz for nearby galaxies. Furthermore, its high (anticipated) emission line sensitivity suggests this array can produce benchmark BH mass measurements. We discuss lessons learned from gas-dynamical modeling of recent ALMA data sets and also compare ALMA and ngVLA CO simulations of a dynamically cold disk. While only a fraction of all local galaxies likely possess sufficiently bright, regularly-rotating nuclear molecular gas, in such cases the ngVLA is expected to more efficiently resolve such emission arising at a projected 50-100 mas from the central BH.