The SLUGGS survey: Probing the supermassive black hole connection with bulges and haloes using red and blue globular cluster systems

Abstract

Understanding whether the bulge or the halo provides the primary link to the growth of supermassive black holes has strong implications for galaxy evolution and supermassive black hole formation itself. In this paper, we approach this issue by investigating extragalactic globular cluster (GC) systems, which can be used to probe the physics of both the bulge and the halo of the host galaxy. We study the relation between the supermassive black hole masses M_BH and the globular cluster system velocity dispersions sigma_GC using an updated and improved sample of 21 galaxies. We exploit the dichotomy of globular cluster system colours, to test if the blue and red globular clusters correlate differently with black hole mass. This may be expected if they trace the potentially different formation history of the halo and of the bulge of the host galaxy respectively. We find that M_BH correlates with the total GC system velocity dispersion, although not as strongly as claimed by recent work of Sadoun & Colin. We also examine the M_BH - sigma_GC relation for barred/bar-less and core/non-core galaxies, finding no significant difference, and for the first time we quantify the impact of radial gradients in the GC system velocity dispersion profile on the M_BH - sigma_GC relation. We additionally predict M_BH in 13 galaxies, including dwarf elliptical galaxies and the cD galaxy NGC 3311. We conclude that our current results cannot discriminate between the bulge/halo scenario. Although there is a hint that the red GC velocity dispersion might correlate better with M_BH than the blue GC velocity dispersion, the number statistics are still too low to be certain.

9 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS, For more information about the SLUGGS Survey see http://sluggs.swin.edu.au/

References in corpus (9)

• Can Supermassive Black Holes Form in Metal-Enriched High-Redshift Protogalaxies ?
• The black hole mass -- stellar velocity dispersion correlation: bulges versus pseudobulges
• The Fundamental Plane of Accretion Onto Black Holes with Dynamical Masses
• An Observed Fundamental Plane Relation for Supermassive Black Holes
• Updated Mass Scaling Relations for Nuclear Star Clusters and a Comparison to Supermassive Black Holes
• Wide-Field Survey of Globular Clusters in M31. II. Kinematics of the Globular Cluster System
• The Globular Cluster System of M60 (NGC 4649). II. Kinematics of the Globular Cluster System
• Shapes of Stellar Systems and Dark Halos from Simulations of Galaxy Major Mergers
• Relation Between Globular Clusters and Supermassive Black Holes in Ellipticals as a Manifestation of the Black Hole Fundamental Plane

Cited by in corpus (17)

• The Coevolution of Supermassive Black Holes and Massive Galaxies at High Redshift
• Galaxy bulges and their massive black holes: a review
• Appreciating mergers for understanding the non-linear $M_{\mathrm{bh}}$-$M_{\ast ,\mathrm{spheroid}}$ and $M_{\mathrm{bh}}$-$M_{\ast ,\mathrm{galaxy}}$ relations, updated herein, and the implications for the (reduced) role of AGN feedback
• The SLUGGS survey: Globular cluster stellar population trends from weak absorption lines in stacked spectra
• The SLUGGS Survey: a catalog of over 4000 globular cluster radial velocities in 27 nearby early-type galaxies
• The Stellar Haloes of Massive Elliptical Galaxies III: Kinematics at Large Radius
• The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey (NGVS) XXXI. The kinematics of intra-cluster globular clusters in the core of the Virgo cluster
• Globular clusters and supermassive black holes in galaxies: further analysis and a larger sample
• The effect of bars on the M-sigma relation: offset, scatter and residuals correlations
• The Next Generation Virgo cluster Survey (NGVS). XXV. Fiducial panchromatic colors of Virgo core globular clusters and their comparison to model predictions
• The relation between globular cluster systems and supermassive black holes in spiral galaxies. The case study of NGC 4258
• Study of gravitational fields and globular cluster systems of early-type galaxies
• Black Hole Mass Measurements of Early-Type Galaxies NGC 1380 and NGC 6861 Through ALMA and HST Observations and Gas-Dynamical Modeling
• Splitting the lentils: Clues to galaxy/black hole coevolution from the discovery of offset relations for non-dusty versus dusty (wet-merger-built) lenticular galaxies in the $M_{\mathrm{bh}}$-$M_{\ast ,\mathrm{spheroid}}$ diagram
• Dark halo microphysics and massive black hole scaling relations in galaxies
• Imprint of the galactic acceleration scale on globular cluster systems
• Connections between Central Intensity Ratio and hot gas properties of early-type galaxies