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A photometric method to determine supermassive black hole masses

A. W. Graham·P. Erwin·N. Caon·I. Trujillo
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Abstract

We report the discovery of a strong correlation between the shape of a bulge's light-profile and the mass of its central supermassive black hole (M_{bh}). We find that log(M_{bh}/M_{sun}) = 2.91(+/-0.38)log(n) + 6.37(+/-0.21), where `n' is the Sersic r^{1/n} shape index of the bulge. This correlation is marginally stronger than the relationship between the logarithm of the stellar velocity dispersion and log(M_{bh}) and has comparable scatter. It therefore offers a cheap (in terms of telescope time) alternative to estimating the masses of supermassive black holes.

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A. W. Graham, P. Erwin, N. Caon, I. Trujillo. 2002-06-14. A photometric method to determine supermassive black hole masses. https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0206248

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