WISDOM Project -- XIX. Figures of merit for supermassive black hole mass measurements using molecular gas and/or megamaser kinematics

Abstract

The mass ($M_{\mathrm{BH}}$) of a supermassive black hole (SMBH) can be measured using spatially-resolved kinematics of the region where the SMBH dominates gravitationally. The most reliable measurements are those that resolve the smallest physical scales around the SMBHs. We consider here three metrics to compare the physical scales probed by kinematic tracers dominated by rotation: the radius of the innermost detected kinematic tracer $R_{\min }$ normalised by respectively the SMBH's Schwarzschild radius ($R_{\mathrm{Schw}}\equiv 2G{M}_{\mathrm{BH}}/c^2$, where $G$ is the gravitational constant and $c$ the speed of light), sphere-of-influence (SOI) radius ($R_{\mathrm{SOI}}\equiv G{M}_{\mathrm{BH}}/\ddot{I}{ƒ}_{\mathrm{e}}^2$, where $\ddot{I}{ƒ}_{\mathrm{e}}$ is the stellar velocity dispersion within the galaxy's effective radius) and equality radius [the radius $R_{\mathrm{eq}}$ at which the SMBH mass equals the enclosed stellar mass, $M_{\mathrm{BH}}=M_{\ast }(R_{\mathrm{eq}})$, where $M_{\ast }(R)$ is the stellar mass enclosed within the radius $R$]. All metrics lead to analogous simple relations between $R_{\min }$ and the highest circular velocity probed $V_{\mathrm{c}}$. Adopting these metrics to compare the SMBH mass measurements using molecular gas kinematics to those using megamaser kinematics, we demonstrate that the best molecular gas measurements resolve material that is physically closer to the SMBHs in terms of $R_{\mathrm{Schw}}$ but is slightly farther in terms of $R_{\mathrm{SOI}}$ and $R_{\mathrm{eq}}$. However, molecular gas observations of nearby galaxies using the most extended configurations of the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array can resolve the SOI comparably well and thus enable SMBH mass measurements as precise as the best megamaser measurements.

13 pages, 9 figures. Accepted by MNRAS