ALMA Gas-dynamical Mass Measurement of the Supermassive Black Hole in the Red Nugget Relic Galaxy PGC 11179

Abstract

We present 0.″22-resolution Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observations of CO(2−1) emission from the circumnuclear gas disk in the red nugget relic galaxy PGC 11179. The disk shows regular rotation, with projected velocities near the center of 400 km s ^−1 . We assume the CO emission originates from a dynamically cold, thin disk and fit gas-dynamical models directly to the ALMA data. In addition, we explore systematic uncertainties by testing the impacts of various model assumptions on our results. The supermassive black hole (BH) mass ( M _BH ) is measured to be M _BH = (1.91 ± 0.04 [1 σ statistical] ${}_{-0.51}^{+0.11}$ [systematic]) × 10 ^9 M _⊙ , and the H -band stellar mass-to-light ratio M / L _H = 1.620 ± 0.004 [1 σ statistical] ${}_{-0.107}^{+0.211}$ [systematic] M _⊙ / L _⊙ . This M _BH is consistent with the BH mass−stellar velocity dispersion relation but over-massive compared to the BH mass−bulge luminosity relation by a factor of 3.7. PGC 11179 is part of a sample of local compact early-type galaxies that are plausible relics of z ∼ 2 red nuggets, and its behavior relative to the scaling relations echoes that of three relic galaxy BHs previously measured with stellar dynamics. These over-massive BHs could suggest that BHs gain most of their mass before their host galaxies do. However, our results could also be explained by greater intrinsic scatter at the high-mass end of the scaling relations, or by systematic differences in gas- and stellar-dynamical methods. Additional M _BH measurements in the sample, including independent cross-checks between molecular gas- and stellar-dynamical methods, will advance our understanding of the co-evolution of BHs and their host galaxies.

Keywords

• Supermassive black holes
• Molecular gas
• Galaxy circumnuclear disk
• Galaxy kinematics
• Early-type galaxies
• Extragalactic astronomy