Galaxy cores as relics of black hole mergers |
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| Authors: | Milo&#;Milosavljevi&#; DavidMerritt ArminRest Frank Cvan den Bosch |
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| Institution: | 1Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA; 2Department of Astronomy, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA; 3Max-Planck Institut für Astrophysik, Karl-Schwarzschild Strasse 1, Postfach 1317, 85741 Garching, Germany |
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| Abstract: | We investigate the hypothesis that the cores of elliptical galaxies and bulges are created from the binding energy liberated by the coalescence of supermassive binary black holes during galaxy mergers. Assuming that the central density profiles of galaxies were initially steep power laws, ρ ～ r -2 , we define the 'mass deficit' as the mass in stars that had to be removed from the nucleus in order to produce the observed core. We use non-parametric deprojection to compute the mass deficit in a sample of 35 early-type galaxies with high-resolution imaging data. We find that the mass deficit correlates well with the mass of the nuclear black hole, consistent with the predictions of merger models. We argue that cores in haloes of non-interacting dark matter particles should be comparable in size to those observed in the stars. |
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| Keywords: | black hole physics galaxies: elliptical and lenticular cD galaxies: interactions galaxies: nuclei |
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