M94 As A Unique Testbed for Black Hole Mass Estimates and AGN Activity At Low Luminosities

Details M94 As A Unique Testbed for Black Hole Mass Estimates and AGN Activity At Low Luminosities M94 As A Unique Testbed for Black Hole Mass Estimates and AGN Activity At Low Luminosities

2011-12-15

arxiv.org/abs/1112.3668v2

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics

11 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Advances in Astronomy

Scientific paper

We discuss the peculiar nature of the nucleus of M94 (NGC 4736) in the context of new measurements of the broad H_alpha emission from HST-STIS observations. We show that this component is unambiguously associated with the high-resolution X-ray, radio, and variable UV sources detected at the optical nucleus of this galaxy. These multi-wavelength observations suggest that NGC 4736 is one of the least luminous broad-line (type 1) LINERs, with Lbol = 2.5 \times 10^40 erg/s. This LINER galaxy has also possibly the least luminous broad line region known (LH_alpha =2.2\times10^37 erg/s). We compare black hole mass estimates of this system to the recently measured ~7 \times 10^6 M_sun dynamical black hole mass measurement. The fundamental plane and M-sigma relationship roughly agree with the measured black hole mass, while other accretion based estimates (the M-FWHM(H_alpha) relation, empirical correlation of BH mass with high-ionization mid IR emission lines, and the X-ray excess variance) provide much lower estimates (~10^5 M_sun). An energy budget test shows that the AGN in this system may be deficient in ionizing radiation relative to the observed emission-line activity. This deficiency may result from source variability or the superposition of multiple sources including supernovae.

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