The Relation between Black Hole Mass, Bulge Mass, and Near-Infrared Luminosity

Abstract

We present new accurate near-infrared (NIR) spheroid (bulge) structural parameters obtained by a two-dimensional image analysis of all galaxies with a direct black hole (BH) mass determination. As expected, NIR bulge luminosities Lbul and BH masses are tightly correlated, and if we consider only those galaxies with a secure BH mass measurement and an accurate Lbul (27 objects), the spread of MBH-Lbul is similar to MBH-σe, where σe is the effective stellar velocity dispersion. We find an intrinsic rms scatter of 0.3 dex in log MBH. By combining the bulge effective radii Re measured in our analysis with σe, we find a tight linear correlation (rms 0.25 dex) between MBH and the virial bulge mass (Reσ), with MBH/Mbul ~ 0.002. A partial correlation analysis shows that MBH depends on both σe and Re and that both variables are necessary to drive the correlations between MBH and other bulge properties.