Observational data show that the correlation between the masses of supermassive black holes MBH and galaxy bulge masses Mbulge follows a nearly linear trend, and that the correlation is strongest with the bulge rather than the total stellar mass Mgal. With increasing redshift, the ratio Γ=MBH/Mbulge relative to z = 0 also seems to be larger for MBH≳108.5M⊙. This study looks more closely at statistics to see what effect it has on creating, and observing, the MBH–Mbulge correlation. It is possible to show that if galaxy merging statistics can drive the correlation, minor mergers are responsible for causing a convergence to linearity most evident at high masses, whereas major mergers have a central limit convergence that more strongly reduces the scatter. This statistical reasoning is agnostic about galaxy morphology. Therefore, combining statistical prediction (more major mergers ⟹ tighter correlation) with observations (bulges = tightest correlation), would lead one to conclude that more major mergers (throughout an entire merger tree, not just the primary branch) give rise to more prominent bulges. Lastly, with regard to controversial findings that Γ increases with redshift, this study shows why the luminosity function (LF) bias argument, taken correctly at face value, actually strengthens, rather than weakens, the findings. However, correcting for LF bias is unwarranted because the BH mass scale for quasars is bootstrapped to the MBH–σ* correlation in normal galaxies at z = 0, and quasar–quasar comparisons are mostly internally consistent. In Monte-Carlo simulations, high Γ galaxies are indeed present: they are statistical outliers (i.e., “under-merged”) that take longer to converge to linearity via minor mergers. Additional evidence that the galaxies are undermassive at z≳2 for their MBH is that the quasar hosts are very compact for their expected mass.

We present results from infrared spectroscopic projects that aim to test the relation between the mass of a black hole MBH and the velocity dispersion of the stars in its host-galaxy bulge. We demonstrate that near-infrared, high-resolution spectroscopy assisted by adaptive optics is key in populating the high-luminosity end of the relation. We show that the velocity dispersions of mid-infrared, high-ionization lines originating from gas in the narrow-line region of the active galactic nucleus follow the same relation. This result provides a way of inferring MBH estimates for the cosmologically significant population of obscured, type 2 AGN that can be applicable to data from spectrographs on next-generation infrared telescopes.

In a survey of 18 nearby Seyfert nuclei, we find evidence for geometrically thick gas disks on scales of tens of parsecs. Mapping the interstellar medium traced by H2 ν = 1–0 S(1) emission using the infrared integral field spectrometers OSIRIS and SINFONI reveals general disk rotation with an additional significant component of random bulk motion implied by the high local velocity dispersion. The size scale of the typical nuclear gas disk is ~30 pc in radius with a comparable vertical height, and the distribution and kinematics suggest the gas is spatially mixed with the nuclear stellar population. Based on the estimated characteristic gas mass fraction of 10%, the average gas mass within this region is ~107M⊙. This suggests column densities of NH ~ 5 × 1023 cm−2, but the significantly lower densities implied by the stellar continuum extinction indicate that the gas distribution on these scales is dominated by dense clumps. We discuss the feasibility of constraining the masses of the central black holes via modeling of the gas disk kinematics, highlighting the importance of properly accounting for the gas velocity dispersion, and the use of these direct mass estimates to calibrate masses derived from the method of reverberation mapping.

To constrain the origin of scaling relations between black hole mass and galaxy properties, i.e., stellar velocity dispersion and bulge luminosity, we investigate the evolution of scaling relations in the past 6 Gyrs. Over the last three years, we have obtained high signal-to-noise ratio Keck spectra of ~ 50 intermediate luminosity broad-line AGNs at z ~ 0.4 and z ~ 0.6, to measure stellar velocity dispersion, and HST (ACS and NICMOS) images of the same objects (~ 40 so far), to measure bulge luminosity from the two-dimensional AGN-galaxy decomposition analysis. In this paper, we will summarize the main results on the MBH–σ and MBH–bulge luminosity relations and their evolution to the present-day universe. The measured scaling relations show that the relations have evolved significantly in the past 6 billion years, and that black hole growth predates the final galaxy assembly.

We derive improved versions of the relations between supermassive black hole mass MBH and host-galaxy bulge velocity dispersion σ and luminosity L (the MBH–σ and MBH–Lbulge relations), based on ~ 50 MBH measurements and ~ 20 upper limits. Particular attention is paid to recovery of the intrinsic scatter (ϵ0) in both relations. We find the scatter to be significantly larger than estimated in most previous studies. The large scatter requires revision of the local black hole mass function, and it implies that there may be substantial selection bias in studies of the evolution of the MBH–σ and MBH–Lbulge relations. When only considering ellipticals, the scatter decreases. These results appear to be insensitive to a wide range of assumptions about the measurement errors and the distribution of intrinsic scatter. We also investigate the effects on the fits of culling the sample according to the resolution of the black hole's sphere of influence.

We present K-band adaptive-optics assisted spectroscopic observations of the central region of the archetype head-tail radio galaxy NGC 1265 (3C 83.1), with the aim of constraining the mass of the supermassive black hole (MBH). The near-infrared data taken with the Altair–NIRI system on the Gemini North have a spatial resolution of FWHM = 0.”11 (39 pc, at the galaxy's distance of 73 Mpc).

As galaxies assemble through hierarchical merging, some black holes grow to become the central black holes of massive galaxies; however, others may be stripped via interactions into regions of galaxies where they will remain quiescent. Such objects may be the source of observed off-nuclear intermediate-mass black hole candidates, as detected by Farrell et al. (2009). We use a cosmological N-body simulation of a disk-dominated galaxy (Vc = 140 km s−1, presented by Governato et al. 2009) to examine the formation and merging histories of seed black holes during hierarchical assembly. Our method incorporates star formation, supernova feedback, a physically motivated description of black hole seed creation, growth, and merging.

Eight new black hole masses have been derived from a recent reverberation-mapping experiment carried out at Lick Observatory. The masses lie in the range ~ 106–107M⊙ and will allow us to extend the low end of AGN scaling relationships by a factor of ~10.

We present a monitoring campaign on high-luminosity quasars which will extend the existing reverberation mapping results by two orders of magnitude in luminosity, probing the broad-line region size and black hole mass of luminous AGN at redshift ~ 2 – 3.

A large fraction of otherwise normal galaxies shows weak nuclear activity. One of the signatures of the low-luminosity active galactic nuclei (LLAGNs) is the ultraviolet variability which was serendipitously discovered in the center of some low-ionization nuclear emission-line region (LINER) galaxies (see Ho 2008 for a review).

Secure measurements of the mass of the central supermassive black hole, MBH, in external galaxies are traditionally obtained through the modeling of the stellar and/or gaseous kinematics, most often derived using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations in the optical domain. The modeling of the nuclear ionized-gas kinematics has led to accurate MBH measurements at a relatively cheap cost in terms of observation time compared to stellar-dynamical MBH determinations. But only a handful of the objects have turned out to have sufficiently regular gas velocity fields for the purpose of modeling. Nevertheless, the HST archive contains a yet untapped resource that can be used to better constrain the MBH budget across the different morphological types of galaxies, which consists of the vast number of the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) spectra from which a central emission-line width can be measured. These data allow to put an upper limit on MBH for a large number of galaxies and promise to compensate for the lack of exact measurements when studying the MBH–host galaxy relationships.

Reverberation mapping takes advantage of the presence of a time delay or lag, τ, between continuum and emission line flux variations observed through spectroscopic monitoring campaigns to infer the radius of the broad-line region (BLR) and, subsequently, the central black hole mass in type 1 AGNs. We present results from a multi-month reverberation mapping campaign undertaken primarily at MDM Observatory with supporting observations from around the world. We measure BLR radii and black hole masses for six objects. The primary goal of this campaign was to obtain either new or improved Hβ reverberation lag measurements for several relatively low-luminosity AGNs. Using cross correlation techniques to measure the time delay between the mean optical continuum flux density around 5100 Å and the integrated Hβ flux, we determine the Hβ lags and black hole mass measurements listed in columns 2 and 3 of Table 1, respectively. Column 4 tells if this measurement is new, an improvement meant to replace a previous, less reliable measurement, or simply an additional measurement not used to replace a previous value. The complete results from this study are currently being prepared for publication. A subsequent velocity-resolved analysis of the Hβ response shows that three of the six primary targets demonstrate kinematic signatures (column 5) of infall, outflow, and non-radial virialized motions (see Denney et al. 2009).

Cosmological simulations describing both the evolution of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies were performed by using the tree PM-SPH code GADGET-2 (Springel 2005). Physical mechanisms affecting the dynamics and the physical conditions of the gas (ionization and cooling processes, local heating by stars, injection of mechanical energy by supernovae, chemical enrichment) were introduced in the present version of the code (Filloux 2009). Black holes in a state of accretion (AGNs) also inject mechanical energy in the surrounding medium, contributing for quenching the star formation activity. In all simulations a ΛCDM cosmology was adopted (h = 0.7, ΩΛ=0.7, Ωm=0.3, Ωb=0.046 and σ8=0.9). Simulations were performed in a volume with a side of 50h−1 Mpc, starting at z = 50 and through the present time (z = 0). For low and intermediate resolution runs, the initial gas mass particles are respectively 5.35× 108M⊙ and 3.09×108M⊙. Black holes (BHs) are represented by collisionless particles and seeds of 100 M⊙ were introduced in density peaks at z = 15, growing either by accretion or coalescence. The accretion rate from the “disk mode” is based on a turbulent viscous thin disk model whereas in the “spherical mode” the rate is given by the Bondi–Hoyle formula. When accreting matter, jets, modeled by conical regions perpendicular to the disk plane, inject kinetic energy into the surrounding medium. Two models were tested: in the first, the injected energy rate is about 10% of the gravitational energy rate released in the accretion process while in the second, the injected energy rate is based on the Blandford & Znajek (1977) mechanism. All simulations give, at z = 0, similar black hole mass function but they overestimate slightly the BH density for masses above ~ 108M⊙. The resulting BH density in this mass range is affected by feedback processes since they control the amount of gas available for accretion. The present simulations are not able to produce very massive BHs (~109M⊙) at z ~ 6. However the evolution of the BH mass density derived from our simulations are in quite good agreement with that derived from the QSO luminosity function. This indicates that our simulations reproduce quite well the average accretion rate history of BHs. Correlations between the BH mass and properties of the host galaxy (velocity dispersion for bulge systems or the stellar mass or the dark halo mass) are also well reproduced. In conclusion, these exploratory simulations reproduce the data at z = 0 quite well. However, the present adopted recipe for the accretion rate in the “disk mode” seems to be inefficient to produce massive BHs as early as z ~ 6. Higher resolution simulations including a new approach for modeling the “disk mode” are presently under way and that particular difficulty is expected to be solved.

A new empirical formulae is given for estimating the masses of black holes in AGNs from the Hβ velocity dispersion and the continuum luminosity at 5100 Å. It is calibrated to reverberation-mapping and stellar-dynamical estimates of black hole masses. The resulting mass estimates are as accurate as reverberation-mapping and stellar-dynamical estimates. The new mass estimates show that there is very little scatter in the MBH–Lbulge relationship for high-luminosity galaxies, and that the scatter increases substantially in lower-mass galaxies.

While characterization of the MBH–σ* relationship in AGNs has improved due to the increase in available data and the improvement in accuracy of both MBH and σ* measurements, additional data at the high-luminosity end of the distribution of quasars are needed, as recent studies indicate that perhaps the relation steepens in this regime. To this end, we present three new measurements in objects at the high-luminosity end of the relation.

We derive Mbulge for HE 0047–1756 via Hα gas dynamics. The resulting large value of MBH/Mbulge may imply evolution in the correlation at high redshifts.

We investigate 10 QSO host galaxies at 1<z<2 in the COSMOS field (Scoville et al. 2007), observed with the HST in both ACS/WFC I-band and NICMOS/NIC3 H-band. We find that our galaxies with mean z = 1.4 follow the local MBH–Mbulge relation exactly – however, not with an explicit bulge mass, but with their total stellar mass.

We present results from a survey of the properties of the central black holes in nearby AGN. This shows that AGN radiating near Eddington are on average less massive now than at z ~ 1.

We present preliminary measurements of the central black hole mass MBH, and stellar mass-to-light ratio M*/LR, in the Brightest Cluster Galaxy of Abell 2162 (A2162–BCG), using integral-field unit (IFU) data from OSIRIS on Keck 2 with laser guide star adaptive optics (LGS-AO). Our results demonstrate early success in an ongoing effort to obtain stellar dynamical measurements of MBH in nine BCGs using ground-based AO.

Following the approach of Melnikov & Shevchenko (2008), we explore how the nonlinearity in the emission-line luminosity Ll of a broad-line region cloud, in its dependence on the ionizing continuum flux Fi incident on the cloud, affects estimates of the size of the broad-line region by means of cross-correlation methods. We show that the estimates obtained by straightforward cross-correlation of emission-line and continuum light curves can significantly underestimate the BLR size. We demonstrate examples of direct reverberation modelling of AGN emission-line light curves taking into account the nonlinearity of the “Ll–Fi” relation. This nonlinearity allows one to explain the differences in the time lags for different lines. Cross-correlation estimates of the BLR size turn out to be small in comparison to the estimates obtained by the direct reverberation modelling.