The Upper End of the Supermassive Black Hole Mass Function: Pushing the 10 Billion Solar Mass Limit.

Details The Upper End of the Supermassive Black Hole Mass Function: Pushing the 10 Billion Solar Mass Limit. The Upper End of the Supermassive Black Hole Mass Function: Pushing the 10 Billion Solar Mass Limit.

Jul 2003

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003hst..prop.9838f&link_type=abstract

HST Proposal ID #9838

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Hst Proposal Id #9838 Galaxies

Scientific paper

In 1994, HST provided the first secure detection of a supermassive black hole {SBH} in a galactic nucleus. The galaxy was M87, the black hole almost 4 billion solar masses. Since then, two dozen additional SBH detections have been the outcome of the several hundred orbits of HST time devoted to this cause. Yet, M87's black hole is still the most massive known, and in only two other galaxies have SBHs in excess of a billion solar masses been detected. The aim of this proposal is to characterize the high mass end of the local SBH mass function. Four brightest cluster galaxies have been carefully selected. Their large masses, luminosites and stellar velocity dispersions, as well as their having a merging history which is unmatched by galaxies in less crowded environments, make these galaxies the most promising hosts of the most massive SBHs in the local Universe. It is in the high mass regime that the unavoidable link between the evolution of supermassive black holes and the hierarchical build-up of galaxies leaves its clearest signature. It is these galaxies that are expected to be the relicts of the most luminous high redshift quasars, those so spectacularly targeted by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Expanding {and extending} the high mass end of the local SBH mass function is the next obligatory step we need to take to improve our understanding of how SBHs, and their hosts, formed and evolved.

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