The Brightest Cluster Galaxy in Abell 85: The Largest Core Known so far

Abstract

We have found that the brightest cluster galaxy (BCG) in Abell~85, Holm 15A, displays the largest core so far known. Its cusp radius, $r_{\gamma }=4.57\pm 0.06$ kpc ($4.26^{\prime \prime }\pm 0.06^{\prime \prime }$), is more than 18 times larger than the mean for BCGs, and $\ge 1$ kpc larger than A2261-BCG, hitherto the largest-cored BCG (Postman, Lauer, Donahue, et al. 2012) Holm 15A hosts the luminous amorphous radio source 0039-095B and has the optical signature of a LINER. Scaling laws indicate that this core could host a supermassive black hole (SMBH) of mass $M_{\bullet }\sim (10^9-10^{11})M_{\odot }$. We suggest that cores this large represent a relatively short phase in the evolution of BCGs, whereas the masses of their associated SBMH might be set by initial conditions.

14 pages, 3 figure, 2 tables, accepted for publication in ApJ Letters on October 6th, 2014, replacement of previous manuscript submitted on May 30th, 2014 to astro-ph

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