Identification of Intermediate-mass Black Hole Candidates among a Sample of Sd Galaxies

Abstract

We analyzed images of every northern hemisphere Sd galaxy listed in the Third Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies with a relatively face-on inclination ( θ ≤ 30°). Specifically, we measured the spiral arms’ winding angle, ϕ , in 85 galaxies. We applied a novel black hole mass planar scaling relation involving the rotational velocities (from the literature) and pitch angles of each galaxy to predict central black hole masses. This yielded 23 galaxies, each having at least a 50% chance of hosting a central intermediate-mass black hole (IMBH), 10 ^2 1.22% of bright galaxies ( B _T ≲ 15.5 mag) in the local Universe host an IMBH (i.e., the “occupation fraction”), which implies a number density >4.96 × 10 ^−6 Mpc ^−3 for central IMBHs. Finally, we observe that Sd galaxies exhibit an unexpected diversity of properties that resemble the general population of spiral galaxies, albeit with an enhanced signature of the eponymous prototypical traits (i.e., low masses, loosely wound spiral arms, and smaller rotational velocities).

Keywords

• Astrostatistics
• Galaxy evolution
• Hubble classification scheme
• Intermediate-mass black holes
• Late-type galaxies
• Regression