Exploring mass measurements of supermassive black holes in AGN using GAMA photometry and spectroscopy

TL;DR

This study evaluates various optical photometric methods to estimate supermassive black hole masses in AGN, comparing them to spectroscopic measurements, and discusses their effectiveness for large survey data.

Contribution

It introduces novel ground-based optical imaging techniques for SMBH mass estimation using spheroid properties and compares their accuracy to traditional spectroscopic methods.

Findings

No correlation between Hα-based and spheroid property-based SMBH masses.

Bulge or galaxy stellar mass methods show significant correlation with spectroscopic masses.

Systematic offset observed in galaxy stellar mass-based SMBH estimates.

Abstract

In the era of massive photometric surveys, we explore several approaches to estimate the masses of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in active galactic nuclei (AGN) from optical ground-based imaging, in each case comparing to the independent SMBH mass measurement obtained from spectroscopic data. We select a case-study sample of 28 type 1 AGN hosted by nearby galaxies from the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) survey. We perform multi-component spectral decomposition, extract the AGN component and calculate the SMBH mass from the broad H$\alpha$ emission line width and luminosity. The photometric $g$ and $i$ band data is decomposed into AGN+spheroid(+disc)(+bar) components with careful surface brightness fitting. From these, the SMBH mass is estimated using its relation with the spheroid S\'ersic index or effective radius (both used for the first time on ground-based optical imaging of AGN); and the more widely used scaling relations based on bulge or galaxy stellar mass. We find no correlation between the H$\alpha$-derived SMBH masses and those based on the spheroid S\'ersic index or effective radius, despite these being the most direct methods involving only one scaling relation. The bulge or galaxy stellar mass based methods both yield significant correlations, although with considerable scatter and, in the latter case, a systematic offset. We provide possible explanations for this and discuss the requirements, advantages and drawbacks of each method. These considerations will be useful to optimise stategies for upcoming high quality ground-based and space-borne sky surveys to estimate SMBH masses in large numbers of AGN.