Luminosity Models and Density Profiles for Nuclear Star Clusters for a Nearby Volume-Limited Sample of 29 Galaxies

Abstract

Nuclear Star Clusters (NSCs) are dense clusters of stars that reside in the centers of a majority of the galaxies. In this paper, we study the density profiles for 29 galaxies in a volume-limited survey within 10 Mpc to characterize their NSCs. These galaxies span a 3$\times$10${}^8$ - 8$\times$10${}^{10}$ M${}_{\odot }$ and a wide range of Hubble types. We use high-resolution Hubble space telescope archival data to create luminosity models for the galaxies using Sérsic profiles to parameterize the NSCs. We also provide estimates for photometric masses of NSCs and their host galaxies using color-M/L relationships and examine their correlation. We use the Multi-Gaussian Expansion (MGE) to derive the NSC densities and their 3-D mass density profiles. The 3-D density profiles characterize the NSC densities on the scales as small as $\sim$1 pc, approaching the likely spheres of influence for black holes in these objects. We find that these densities correlate with galaxy mass, with galaxies most NSCs being denser than typical globular clusters. We parametrize the 3-D NSC density profiles, and their scatter and slope as a function of galaxy stellar mass to enable the construction of realistic nuclear mass profiles. These are useful in predicting the rate of tidal disruption events in galaxies. We will verify the results of this paper in a follow-up paper that presents the dynamical modeling of the same sample of NSCs.

arXiv comment20 pages, 11 figures, Submitted for publication in the AAS Journals

References in corpus (101)

• Stellar population synthesis at the resolution of 2003
• Measuring Reddening with SDSS Stellar Spectra and Recalibrating SFD
• PARSEC: stellar tracks and isochrones with the PAdova and TRieste Stellar Evolution Code
• The propagation of uncertainties in stellar population synthesis modeling I: The relevance of uncertain aspects of stellar evolution and the IMF to the derived physical properties of galaxies
• Detailed Decomposition of Galaxy Images. II. Beyond Axisymmetric Models
• Some Aspects of Measurement Error in Linear Regression of Astronomical Data
• Young massive star clusters
• The Photometric Performance and Calibration of the HST Advanced Camera For Surveys
• Resolved Massive Star Clusters in the Milky Way and its Satellites: Brightness Profiles and a Catalogue of Fundamental Parameters
• A concise reference to (projected) Sersic R^{1/n} quantities, including Concentration, Profile Slopes, Petrosian indices, and Kron Magnitudes
• The 70 Month Swift-BAT All-Sky Hard X-Ray Survey
• The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey. VI. Isophotal Analysis and the Structure of Early-Type Galaxies
• The ACS Virgo Cluster Survey. VIII. The Nuclei of Early-Type Galaxies
• Measuring the inclination and mass-to-light ratio of axisymmetric galaxies via anisotropic Jeans models of stellar kinematics
• The Spitzer Survey of Stellar Structure in Galaxies (S^4G)
• Efficient Multi-Gaussian Expansion of galaxies
• HST photometry of dwarf elliptical galaxies in Coma, and an explanation for the alleged structural dichotomy between dwarf and bright elliptical galaxies
• Rates of tidal disruption of stars by massive central black holes
• Rates of Stellar Tidal Disruption as Probes of the Supermassive Black Hole Mass Function
• Nuclear Star Clusters
• Revised Rates of Stellar Disruption in Galactic Nuclei
• A Low-Mass Central Black Hole in the Bulgeless Seyfert 1 Galaxy NGC 4395
• Optical discovery of probable stellar tidal disruption flares
• An HST Census of Nuclear Star Clusters in Late-Type Spiral Galaxies: I. Observations and Image Analysis
• Six Months of Multi-Wavelength Follow-up of the Tidal Disruption Candidate ASASSN-14li and Implied TDE Rates from ASAS-SN
• High-resolution dark matter density profiles of THINGS dwarf galaxies: Correcting for non-circular motions
• The SINFONI Black Hole Survey: The Black Hole Fundamental Plane revisited and the paths of (co-) evolution of supermassive black holes and bulges
• Imfit: A Fast, Flexible New Program for Astronomical Image Fitting
• Reconstructing the stellar mass distributions of galaxies using S4G IRAC 3.6 and 4.5 micron images: II. The conversion from light to mass
• Masses of star clusters in the nuclei of bulge-less spiral galaxies
• Color--Mass-to-Light Ratio Relations for Disk Galaxies
• The Centers of Early-Type Galaxies with HST. VI. Bimodal Central Surface Brightness Profiles
• Quantifying the Coexistence of Massive Black Holes and Dense Nuclear Star Clusters
• Black hole growth through hierarchical black hole mergers in dense star clusters: implications for gravitational wave detections
• A HST Census of Nuclear Star Clusters in Late-Type Spiral Galaxies: II. Cluster Sizes and Structural Parameter Correlations
• The ACS Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters: M54 and Young Populations in the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy
• The Coincidence of Nuclear Star Clusters and Active Galactic Nuclei
• Stellar populations in the nuclei of late-type spiral galaxies
• Tidal Disruption Events Prefer Unusual Host Galaxies
• HST/STIS Spectra of Nuclear Star Clusters in Spiral Galaxies: Dependence of Age and Mass On Hubble Type
• Bulges Of Nearby Galaxies With Spitzer: Scaling Relations in Pseudobulges and Classical Bulges
• Co-Evolution of Galactic Nuclei and Globular Cluster Systems
• Masses and Scaling Relations for Nuclear Star Clusters, and their Coexistence with Central Black Holes
• Galactic bulges from Hubble Space Telescope NICMOS observations: the lack of r^{1/4} bulges
• Converting From 3.6 and 4.5 Micron Fluxes to Stellar Mass
• From Supermassive Black Holes to Dwarf Elliptical Nuclei: a Mass Continuum
• Co-evolution of nuclear star clusters, massive black holes and their host galaxies
• Nuclear star clusters in 228 spiral galaxies in the HST/WFPC2 archive: catalogue and comparison to other stellar systems
• The NGC 404 Nucleus: Star Cluster and Possible Intermediate Mass Black Hole
• Evolution of tidal disruption candidates discovered by XMM-Newton
• Clues to Nuclear Star Cluster Formation from Edge-on Spirals
• Improved Dynamical Constraints on the Masses of the Central Black Holes in Nearby Low-mass Early-type Galactic Nuclei And the First Black Hole Determination for NGC 205
• On the mass and luminosity functions of tidal disruption flares: rate suppression due to black hole event horizons
• The tidal disruption rate in dense galactic cusps containing a supermassive binary black hole
• Large scale kinematics and dynamical modelling of the Milky Way nuclear star cluster
• The ACS Fornax Cluster Survey. VI. The Nuclei of Early-Type Galaxies in the Fornax Cluster
• The Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey. XXIII. Fundamentals of nuclear star clusters over seven decades in galaxy mass
• Enhanced tidal disruption rates from massive black hole binaries
• Measurement of the rate of stellar tidal disruption flares
• Nearby Early-Type Galactic Nuclei at High Resolution: Dynamical Black Hole and Nuclear Star Cluster Mass Measurements
• Measuring the mass of the central black hole in the bulgeless galaxy NGC 4395 from gas dynamical modeling
• The Nuclear Stellar Disk in Andromeda: A Fossil from the Era of Black Hole Growth
• Spiral Galaxies with HST/NICMOS. I. Nuclear Morphologies, Color Maps and Distinct Nuclei
• The HST/ACS Coma Cluster Survey. X. Nuclear star clusters in low-mass early-type galaxies: scaling relations
• Galactic Bulges from HST NICMOS Observations: central galaxian objects, and nuclear profile slopes
• Tidal Disruption Event Host Galaxies in the Context of the Local Galaxy Population
• Identifying AGNs in low-mass galaxies via long-term optical variability
• Updated Mass Scaling Relations for Nuclear Star Clusters and a Comparison to Supermassive Black Holes
• Stellar populations and star formation histories of the nuclear star clusters in six nearby galaxies
• Constraining the role of star cluster mergers in nuclear cluster formation: Simulations confront integral-field data
• Black hole masses of tidal disruption event host galaxies II
• Black Hole Mass Scaling Relations for Spiral Galaxies. I. $M_{\mathrm{BH}}$-$M_{\ast ,\mathrm{sph}}$
• Improved Dynamical Constraints on the Mass of the central Black Hole in NGC 404
• A dependence of the tidal disruption event rate on global stellar surface mass density and stellar velocity dispersion
• Phase-space mixing and the merging of cusps
• Triaxial orbit-based modelling of the Milky Way Nuclear Star Cluster
• Are nuclear star clusters the precursors of massive black holes?
• The Structure of Nuclear Star Clusters in Nearby Late-type Spiral Galaxies from Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Camera 3 Imaging
• The M-sigma Relation for Nucleated Galaxies
• Spitzer Local Volume Legacy (LVL) SEDs and Physical Properties
• Comparison of the X-ray emission from Tidal Disruption Events with those of Active Galactic Nuclei
• HST/WFPC2 imaging of the circumnuclear structure of LLAGNs. I Data and nuclear morphology
• Tidal breakup of binary stars at the Galactic Center. II. Hydrodynamic simulations
• The Black Hole - Bulge Mass Relation in Megamaser Host Galaxies
• Evolution of Nuclear Star Clusters
• Extending the M_(bh)-sigma diagram with dense nuclear star clusters
• Tidal disruption rate of stars by supermassive black holes obtained by direct N-body simulations
• Virgo Redux: The Masses and Stellar Content of Nuclei in Early-Type Galaxies from Multi-Band Photometry and Spectroscopy
• Black hole and neutron star mergers in Galactic Nuclei: the role of triples
• A Revised Characterization of the WFPC2 CTE Loss
• The complex nature of the nuclear star cluster in FCC 277
• Gas and Star Formation in the Circinus Galaxy
• The Carnegie-Irvine Galaxy Survey. VIII. Demographics of Bulges along the Hubble Sequence
• Do Nuclear Star Clusters and Black Holes Follow the Same Host-Galaxy Correlations?
• Introducing the Search for Intermediate-mass Black-hole In Nearby Galaxy (SIBLING) Survey
• Nuclear Star Clusters in Cosmological Simulations
• Constraining the Stellar Mass Function from the Deficiency of Tidal Disruption Flares in the Nuclei of Massive Galaxies
• The VIRUS-P Exploration of Nearby Galaxies (VENGA): The stellar populations and assembly of NGC 2903's bulge, bar, and outer disc
• The Shape of Dark Matter Haloes IV. The Structure of Stellar Discs in Edge-on Galaxies
• Spatial and kinematic segregation in star cluster merger remnants
• The Milky Way like galaxy NGC 6384 and its nuclear star cluster at high NIR spatial resolution using LBT/ARGOS commissioning data

Cited by in corpus (35)

• Nuclear Star Clusters
• Enhancement of the tidal disruption event rate in galaxies with a nuclear star cluster: from dwarfs to ellipticals
• Quiescent and active galactic nuclei as factories of merging compact objects in the era of gravitational-wave astronomy
• Detection of a $\sim$100,000 M${}_{\odot }$ black hole in M31's most massive globular cluster: A tidally stripped nucleus
• The nucleation fraction of Local Volume galaxies
• Formation of super-massive black holes in galactic nuclei I: delivering seed intermediate-mass black holes in massive stellar clusters
• Disentangling the formation mechanisms of nuclear star clusters
• Global instability by runaway collisions in nuclear stellar clusters: Numerical tests of a route for massive black hole formation
• Tidal disruption events in the first billion years of a galaxy
• Partial stellar tidal disruption events and their rates
• The MBHBM${}^{\star }$ Project -- II. Molecular Gas Kinematics in the Lenticular Galaxy NGC 3593 Reveal a Supermassive Black Hole
• Gravitational waves from the remnants of the first stars in nuclear star clusters
• Formation of supermassive black holes in galactic nuclei II: retention and growth of seed intermediate-mass black holes
• Photometric and Structural Parameters of Newly Discovered Nuclear Star Clusters in Local Volume Galaxies
• Gravitational waves from mergers of Population III binary black holes: roles played by two evolution channels
• Rates of Stellar Tidal Disruption Events around Intermediate-Mass Black Holes
• A direct black hole mass measurement in a Little Red Dot at the Epoch of Reionization
• PHANGS-JWST First Results: A combined HST and JWST analysis of the nuclear star cluster in NGC 628
• Efficiency of black hole formation via collisions in stellar systems: An analysis of data from simulations and observations
• Calibrating the binary black hole population in nuclear star clusters through tidal disruption events
• Demographics of Tidal Disruption Events with L-Galaxies: I. Volumetric TDE rates and the abundance of Nuclear Star Clusters
• Are we observing a NSC in course of formation in the NGC 4654 galaxy?
• A sensitive, high-resolution, wide-field IRAM NOEMA CO(1-0) survey of the very nearby spiral galaxy IC 342
• Identification of Intermediate-mass Black Hole Candidates Among a Sample of Sd Galaxies
• Can Thorne-$\dot{\text{Z}}$ytkow Objects source GW190814-type events?
• Resolving the Nuclear Environments of Tidal Disruption Event Host Galaxies within 45 pc
• Dwarf galaxies in the MATLAS Survey: Hubble Space Telescope observations of nuclear star clusters
• Detecting Intermediate-Mass Black Holes out to 20 Mpc with ELT/HARMONI: The Case of FCC 119
• Low-density star cluster formation: discovery of a young faint fuzzy on the outskirts of the low-mass spiral galaxy NGC 247
• Galaxy mass dependence of metal-enrichment of nuclear star clusters
• Massive Star Clusters in the Semi-Analytical Galaxy Formation Model L-Galaxies 2020
• An accurate and simple, asymptotically matched deprojection of the Sersic law
• Study of central light distribution in nearby early-type galaxies hosting nuclear star clusters
• Tidal disruption event rates across cosmic time: forecasts for LSST, Roman, and JWST and their constraints on the supermassive black hole mass function
• Resolved nuclear kinematics link the formation and growth of nuclear star clusters with the evolution of their early and late-type hosts