Inward Bound—The Search for Supermassive Black Holes in Galactic Nuclei

Kormendy, John; Richstone, D. O.

doi:10.1146/annurev.aa.33.090195.003053

Cited by 2,400 publications

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“…In addition, measurements by the Hubble Space Telescope of the velocity field of hydrogen gas in active galaxies indicate the presence of massive centrally condensed objects. Reviews of these data have been written by Faber (1999), Ho (1999), Kormendy and Richstone (1995), and others.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observational evidence for massive black holes in the centers of active galaxies

1999

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Naturally occurring water vapor maser emission at 1.35 cm wavelength provides an accurate probe for the study of accretion disks around highly compact objects, thought to be black holes, in the centers of active galaxies. Because of the exceptionally fine angular resolution, 200 microarcseconds, obtainable with very long baseline interferometry, accompanied by high spectral resolution, < 0.1 km s −1 , the dynamics and structures of these disks can be probed with exceptional clarity. The data on the galaxy NGC 4258 are discussed here in detail. The mass of the black hole binding the accretion disk is 3.9 × 10 7 M ⊙ . Although the accretion disk has a rotational period of about 800 years, the physical motions of the masers have been directly measured with VLBI over a period of a few years. These measurements also allow the distance from the earth to the black hole to be estimated to an accuracy of 4 percent. The status of the search for other maser/black hole candidates is also discussed.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Observational evidence for massive black holes in the centers of active galaxies

1999

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“…In the last decade, high resolution gas and stellar dynamical measurements from ground-based (e.g., Kormendy & Richstone 1995) and HST observations (e.g., Harms et al 1994;Ferrarese et al 1996 ; van de Marel & van den Bosch 1998; Ferrarese & Ford 99;Gebhardt et al 2000) have provided compelling evidence that several tens of galaxies host massive central dark objects (CDOs) which are likely to be SMBHs. The more reliable dynamical measurements tend to be from observations which resolve the radius of influence (R g−bh ) within which the gravitational force of the BH exceeds that of nearby stars with velocity dispersion σ, namely, However, the scales probed by these measurements are still several 10 5 -10 6 times the Schwarzschild radius (R s−bh ) of the BH, namely,…”

Section: Measurement Of Bh Massesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Fueling and Evolution of AGN: Internal and External Triggers

Jogee

Lecture Notes in Physics

121

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In this chapter, I review the fueling and evolution of active galactic nuclei (AGN) under the influence of internal and external triggers, namely intrinsic properties of host galaxies (morphological or Hubble type, color, presence of bars and other non-axisymmetric features, etc) and external factors such as environment and interactions. The most daunting challenge in fueling AGN is arguably the angular momentum problem as even matter located at a radius of a few hundred pc must lose more than 99.99 % of its specific angular momentum before it is fit for consumption by a BH. I review mass accretion rates, angular momentum requirements, the effectiveness of different fueling mechanisms, and the growth and mass density of black BHs at different epochs. I discuss connections between the nuclear and larger-scale properties of AGN, both locally and at intermediate redshifts, outlining some recent results from the GEMS and GOODS HST surveys.Comment: Invited Review Chapter to appear in LNP Volume on "AGN Physics on All Scales", Chapter 6, in press. 40 pages, 12 figures. Typo in Eq 5 correcte

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“…Such massive black holes are very likely to reside in the centres of galaxies as a fossile of earlier acticity (Kormendy & Richstone 1995). Their formation as a result of collisionless dynamical general relativistic collapse and dissipative processes during galaxy formation is very likely but not yet fully understood (Quinlan & Shapiro 1990).…”

Section: Galactic Nucleimentioning

confidence: 99%

Astrophysical N-Body Simulations: Algorithms and Challenges

Spurzem¹

2001

Astrophysics and Space Science Library

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Abstract. The subjects and key questions faced by computational astrophysics using N -body simulations are discussed in the fields of globular star cluster dynamics, galactic nuclei and cosmological structure formation. After a comparison of the relevance of different N -body algorithms a new concept for a more flexible customized special purpose computer based on a combination of GRAPE and FPGA is proposed. It is an ideal machine for all kinds of N -body simulations using neighbour schemes, as the Ahmad-Cohen direct N -body codes and smoothed particle hydrodynamics for systems including gas.

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Inward Bound—The Search for Supermassive Black Holes in Galactic Nuclei

Cited by 2,400 publications

References 3 publications

Observational evidence for massive black holes in the centers of active galaxies

Observational evidence for massive black holes in the centers of active galaxies

The Fueling and Evolution of AGN: Internal and External Triggers

Astrophysical N-Body Simulations: Algorithms and Challenges

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