The Supermassive Black Hole Mass - Pitch Angle Relation in Spiral Galaxies
Abstract
We present new and improved evidence for a strong correlation, with low scatter, between supermassive black hole mass and spiral arm pitch angle in disk galaxies. Such a correlation could be a useful tool for developing a SMBH mass function for both local and distant galaxies, because other host galaxy features which correlate with black hole mass either require expensive spectroscopy (as in the M-sigma relation) or work less well for spiral than for other galaxies because of the need to disentangle the bulge component from the disk and bar components (Bulge luminosity or Sersic index). A late-type SMBH mass function derived from pitch angle measurements could complement nicely early-type mass functions derived from these other measurements, especially because the late-type mass function has so far received less attention than the early-type mass function.
- Publication:
-
American Astronomical Society Meeting Abstracts #221
- Pub Date:
- January 2013
- Bibcode:
- 2013AAS...22132701K